Senate to form permanent body on devolution

Published July 5, 2015
Chairman’s powers to appoint board, council members being ‘surrendered’. —APP/File
Chairman’s powers to appoint board, council members being ‘surrendered’. —APP/File

ISLAMABAD: The Senate is set to amend its rules to allow for the formation of a permanent house committee to oversee the process of devolution under the 18th amendment, which was passed by parliament in 2010.

Leader of the House Raja Zafarul Haq and Opposition Leader Aitzaz Ahsan will jointly move the amendments to the concerned rules to allow for the formation of the ‘Senate Functional Committee on Devolution’ when the house begins its new session on Monday.

Apart from this, the Senate will take up a number of other amendments to the rules, according to the agenda, a copy of which is available with Dawn.

Previously, the devolution issue was the domain of the committee on Inter-Provincial Coordination.


Chairman’s powers to appoint board, council members being ‘surrendered’


The committee on devolution is being formed through an amendment to Rule 158, which deals with the number of committees and their functions.

According to the suggested amendments, “the functions of the Committee on Devolu­tion” will be to “review, on a continuous basis, implementation of devolution scheme as envisaged in the Constitution; identify and make remedial recommendations where the Constitution (18th Amendment) Act, 2010 has been deviated from, circumvented or not implemented, identify and make recommendations to such aspects of the implementation plan/process which due to administrative or lack of law or for any other reasons is facing or likely to face difficulty in its implementation.

The committee on a regular basis, will “seek the views of the federal government, provincial governments and or any division, department, autonomous or semiautonomous body/bodies related with or pertaining to the process of implementation of the Constitution (18th Amend­ment) Act, 2010 to evaluate and oversee the implementation status” of the act.

Through two different amendments to Rule 166, Mohsin Leghari — an independent treasury senator from Punjab – has proposed to make it binding upon the committees to “bi-annually examine the budgetary allocation and its utilisation by the ministry concerned and present a report in this regard to the house within 45 days”.

Mr Leghari has proposed amendments to sub-rule 4 of Rule 166 which says: “A committee may examine suo motu the expenditures, adm­inistration, delegated legislation, public petitions and policies of the ministry concerned and its attached corporations and public bodies and may call for views of the ministry. After examining the views of the ministry, the committee shall make a report to the Senate, which may make such recommendations thereon as it may deem fit.”

Meanwhile, Chairman Senate Raza Rabbani has decided to surrender his power of nominating the members of various policy and administrative boards and councils of different institutions and an amendment to the rules in this regard is also on the agenda of the Senate sitting.

After passage of the amendment, the chairman will be required to send the names of the members to the concerned standing committee which will be required to ratify it within 30 days.

The proposed amendment says: “All nominations of members to various policy and administrative boards, councils, etc. made by the chairman shall be ratified by the concerned committees within a period of 30 days of reference of nomination to the committee, failing which the nomination shall be deemed to have been ratified: Provided that the Committee, for reasons to be recorded, may not ratify the nomination upon which the chairman Senate shall nominate another member which shall be ratified by the committee within a period of 15 days, failing which the nomination shall be deemed to have been ratified.”

The senators are also expected to pass an amendment to the rules allowing the outgoing Senate chairman to preside over the first meeting of the house after the elections. Presently, the president has the powers to nominate any member of the house to preside over the first sitting after the Senate elections and to conduct the election of the new chairman. However, the outgoing chairman will not be able to preside over the sitting if he himself is a candidate for the office.

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2015

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