PESHAWAR: A lawmaker of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf has submitted a private member’s bill to the provincial assembly proposing to extend the upper age limit for the chief information commissioners (CIC) and commissioners of the Right to Information Commission to 67 years, the officials said.

However, the bill moved by PTI MPA from Peshawar Yasin Khan Khalil has been opposed by the relevant information, establishment and law departments.

Sources told Dawn that the assembly secretariat forwarded the bill to the KP Information and public relations department for approval.

The Assembly secretariat on February 26 wrote a letter to the secretary information asking the department to extend its mandatory consent within a month.

“After the expiration of the said period, necessary consent shall be deemed to have been granted by the government and indicated to the speaker under rule 79 of the provincial assembly rules,” the letter read.

The draft bill proposes to substitute the subs-section 6 of the section 24 of the KP RTI Act 2013.

Section 24(6) says that CIC and information commissioners shall not hold office after they have attained the age of 65 years.

The draft bill proposed to substitute this with text, “notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section 5, the CIC and information commissioners shall not hold office after they have attained the age of 67 years.”

However, source said that the establishment, law and information departments have opposed the private members bill saying it was in contradiction of the constitutional provisions and government policy.

The draft bill contravenes Section 179 of the Constitution, which says, “a judge of the Supreme Court shall hold office until he attains the age of 65 years, unless he sooner resigns or is removed from office in accordance with the Constitution.”

The sources said that the government departments were also of the view that as the move involved monetary impact due to salary and fringe benefits, it couldn’t be moved through a private member’s bill.

Sources told Dawn that the bill was likely to benefit one of the two commissioners working at the commission.

They said the commissioner was to complete his tenure in August after reaching the age of 65 years.

The sources said both the CIC and other commissioner were likely to complete their three years tenure under the current arrangements.

When contacted, MPA Yasin Khan Khalil claimed that he had submitted the bill at the request of RTI commissioner Iftikhar Hussain, who was ‘desirous of serving the province’.

He said the upper age limit for the commissioner of the Right to Services Commission was 67 and for RTI commissioner 65 years.

Mr Yasin said the RTS Act, 2014, mentioned the upper age limit to be 65 years.

Last month, the KP government had submitted a bill to the provincial assembly to dilute the KP RTI Act, 2103.

However, it was silently withdrawn after the government came under fire for ‘trying to rollback’ one of its most progressive legislations i.e. KP RTI Act, 2103.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2018