December 24, 2008	Wednesday	Zilhaj 25, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Dec 23: National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza on Tuesday ruled out a house panel probe involving the chief justice to proceed until a presumed legal hitch is cleared by the Islamabad High Court (IHC), possibly by mid-January.

The development, which puts a question mark on the ruling coalition’s willingness to assert parliamentary supremacy, came four days after a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court had thrown out an earlier restraining order by a court judge.

The chairman of the house standing committee on education, Abid Sher Ali of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N complained that the government and its allies had blocked his panel from proceeding with its inquiry into alleged favours done to a daughter of Supreme Court Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar to enable her to get admission in a medical college.

Allowed to speak on a point of order during a resumed debate on the country’s security situation, a day after being denied the opportunity by Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, Mr Ali demanded that the government stop being partisan in the case and protested against Tuesday’s decision by the committee majority, including members from the ruling Pakistan People’s Party and its allies, to bar the media from covering its meetings.

But Education Minister Mir Hazar Khan Bijrani, who denied the government was partisan and promised “full cooperation” to the committee to “decide this matter judiciously”, said the majority had decided to wait until a decision by the IHC, which has sealed the relevant record of the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (FBISE) and set Jan 13 for the next hearing of a challenge to 20 additional marks awarded to the chief justice’s daughter, Farah Hameed Dogar, in its last intermediate examination.

But while Mr Ali rose again to contest the minister’s argument, the speaker declined to allow him to speak by keeping his mike switched off and seemed to seal the fate of his demand for any early probe by declaring: “Whatever the majority has decided we have to go by that.”

The IHC had earlier declined to restrain the probe, in which the committee chairman had proposed to summon the chief justice to answer questions if he had role in the affair while the restraining order issue by a Supreme Court later was seen by many parliamentarians and legal experts as a challenge to the concept of supremacy of parliament over other organs of the state.

The education minister argued in the house that the committee could not proceed while the board record remained in the high court custody and that “a hasty move will not serve the requirements of justice”.

“The majority view (in the committee) was to postpone (the proceedings) until Jan 13, after which we can make any progress in the light of the (Islamabad High Court) decision,” he said.

Earlier, the prime minister’s adviser on interior, Mr Rehman Malik, told the house that 18 demands made by Talal Bugti, son of the late Akbar Khan Bugti, during his meetings with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani last week had been sent to Inter-Provincial Coordination Minister Raza Rabbani for his comments and one of the demands was for a trial of former president Pervez Musharraf for ordering the murder of the elder Bugti two years ago.

It was on a suggestion from Privatisation Minister Naveed Qamar and a formal motion by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awan, that the house suspended all other business set for what was a private members’ day to resume its debate on security situation in the wake of Indian allegations of Pakistani links with the Nov 26 terror attacks in Mumbai.

But despite the gravity of the situation emphasised by Mr Qamar, many members from both sides of the house seemed more interested in their own affairs as they made a beeline to the prime minister’s desk to get apparent applications signed by him before the present session ends on Wednesday, when a consensus resolution is planned to be adopted at the end of the security debate.