KARACHI: Sindh Assembly readies for presidential election
By Habib Khan Ghori
KARACHI, Oct 5: A special session of the Sindh Assembly has been convened by Assembly Speaker Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah for the presidential election scheduled to take place on Saturday.
The one-day session will be presided over by the Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court, Sabihuddin Ahmed, as the Returning Officer while members of the provincial assembly will cast their votes. The registrar of the Sindh High Court, the Provincial Election Commissioner and the Secretary of the Sindh Assembly will also be present. According to Provincial Election Commissioner Chaudhry Qamaruzzaman, a transparent ballot box will be used for the polling that is to be held in the main hall of the Assembly building, and votes will be cast alphabetically. The polling will start at 10am and continue until 3pm.
Of the 168 seats in the House, there are 130 general seats while 20 seats are reserved for women and 9 for minorities. The government alliance controls a total of 103 seats, with 43 held by the PML(Q), 14 by the PML(F), 41 by the MQM and 5 by the PPP-Patriots. The opposition, meanwhile, has 57 seats with 56 held by the PPPP and one by the MQM (Haqiqi). One seat (PS-123 Karachi) is lying vacant while seven MPAs belonging to the APDM have resigned.
Tame session
Meanwhile, Friday’s session of the Sindh Assembly started two hours and 20 minutes behind its scheduled time of 9am. The tame session lasted merely 45 minutes and transacted no business other than a resolution based on the report and recommendations of the Standing Committee on Food and Agriculture. Even routine points of order, which have over the years become an integral part of every day’s proceedings, were not raised.
No member of the opposition benches was present when the House first assembled. As was decided in Thursday, the chair wanted to take up question hour first and he called a number of questions that had mostly been asked by members of the opposition benches. At this point, members of the opposition entered the hall led by opposition politician Nisar Ahmed Khuhro. He subsequently informed the chair that the delay was due to certain negotiations with senior minister Sardar Ahmed.
The unanimously adopted resolution was moved out of turn by its chairman Anwar Ahmed Khan Mahar following the relaxation of the relevant rules by the House with the speaker in the chair.
Agriculture being ignored
The resolution pointed out that the area of agriculture was ignored while allocating funds under the budget and delays in the release of funds were taking their toll on the agriculture department’s performance. Terming the law and order situation at its worst in the rural areas of Sindh, it recommended that the government provide more jobs in the agricultural sector which, as an added benefit, would reduce the levels of migration of farmers towards urban centres. In order to build confidence amongst the farmers’ communities, the resolution proposed the introduction of an agricultural crop insurance system to protect farmers from financial losses.
Salient points of the resolution are:
· The performance of field assistants’ duties at their place of work should be ensured and political pressure be eliminated.
· The water-proofing of canals and other water-courses should be given priority to control water-loss.
· Necessary steps be taken for the construction of food storage silos.
· Tree plantation along canal banks be given priority, since this would save 64 per cent of the current levels of water-loss due to evaporation and high surrounding temperatures.
· Water sprinkling and drip irrigation technology be introduced to conserve water, which would increase the crop yield at low cost.
· The use of insecticides, pesticides, fertilisers and other growth regulatory products be balanced with the requirements while field assistants should be equipped with theoretical and practical knowledge about the varieties of chemicals.
Other than this resolution, only one question was taken up on Friday since the working hours were to end at noon. While members raised supplementary questions on the first question, MPA Irfan Marwat pointed out that the clock showed 12:05pm. The speaker then called it a day by reading out the order of the governor to prorogue the session sine die.
