Avoiding confrontation: Assembly session called on April 6

KARACHI: Sindh governor Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan, on the recommendation of the chief minister, has summoned a Sindh Assembly session on April 6. Four days ago, speaker Agha Siraj Durrani rejected the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) requisition to call the session and discuss the law and order situation after the Nine Zero raid. MQM parliamentary leader Syed Sardar Ahmed had submitted the application, signed by 43 party MPAs, but Durrani turned down the plea stating that the signatures of eight MPAs did not match the records. The MQM MPAs decided on Tuesday to submit another application for the purpose but the government summoned the session itself. “If the requisition was accepted, the party MPAs would have discussed the raid at length, criticising the law enforcers,” explained a senior official from the law department. “To avoid this, the government rejected their plea and called the session itself.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2015.