Bill seeking to increase minority seats in Parliament deferred

A private bill seeking to increase minority seats in Parliament from 10 to 16 was deferred by a panel on Friday. 

The parliamentary panel told non-Muslims that that they should not consider increasing the number of their seats in Parliament until next year's census was carried out.

Though Chairman Mahmood Bashir Virk observed that the census should not create hurdles in raising the number of seats for non-Muslims, majoritiy of the members of the panel insisted that the bill should be deferred.

Read: Everybody counts: Fresh population census scheduled for March 2016

MNA Asiya Nasir, together with five other members moved the Constitution Amendment Bill 2014 into the National Assembly (NA) earlier this month, after which speaker in the NA Ayaz Sadiq referred the bill to a NA standing committee on law and justice.

This committee will further discuss issues pertaining to the Hindu narrative registration in the next meeting.

Just last month the federal government approved a plan to conduct the Population Census in March 2016, an exercise likely to have profound implications both for the distribution of federal resources as well as allocation of legislative power in the National Assembly.

Read: CCI session: Population census next year with military help

The CCI decided to hold the census in March 2016 with the support of the armed forces, as was done in the 1998 census.