KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly on Monday realised that the rule to expunge words and sentences, which the chair deemed outside the pale of parliamentary decency, held little efficacy in modern times as the live feed of the proceedings of the house being telecast by local TV channels should be checked through certain time-delay mechanism.

The issue was raised when Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Kamran Akhtar, while presenting his calling-attention notice about an issue of not upgrading some posts in NED University from grade-1 to grade-15, used an Urdu phrase, meaning ‘to rein in’, for those who were creating obstacles in the way of resolving the matter.

Senior Minister Nisar Khuhro objected to the phrase and Deputy Speaker Shehla Raza, who was chairing the session, said she had expunged the words. However, Mr Khuhro said in the age of modern technology just expunging “non-parliamentary words” was not enough.

Issue of live feed of house proceedings to TV channels comes under discussion

He said the assembly had allowed TV channels to get live feed of the day’s proceedings and telecast just as it was. He said there should be a time-delay mechanism in place which could help the channels to exercise their editorial judgment by editing such utterances.

The chair asked the assembly’s secretary to look into the matter and report to the speaker’s office.

Universities can decide posts’ upgrade matters

However, responding to the issue raised by Mr Akhtar, the senior minister said universities in the province were autonomous which decide such matters on their own.

He said despite being passed twice the controversial universities bill had not yet become law pending assent of the governor.

However, he said, even without the governor’s assent, the assent to a bill passed twice was deemed given after 10 days to its passage.

He, however, said the new law was not meant to harm autonomy of universities, yet, the government would try that the matter was taken up by the syndicate in future.

MQM’s Dewan Chawla on a point of order complained that growers were in distress over food inspectors’ corruption in procuring wheat at government centres.

Conceding to the complaint, Mr Khuhro said despite his effort to keep the issue corruption-free such complaints kept coming. He asked the member to furnish names of those who were involved in corrupt practices.

ECP’s ban on employment criticised

To another calling-attention notice by Amir Hyder Sheerazi regarding a closed school in Union Council Ghaghi of Thatta district, Mr Khuhro said the government was ensuring that no transfer of teachers should be made without taking student-teacher ratio in mind.

He said there were 35 schools in the said UC of which 28-29 for boys and one for girls were functional and six were closed. He admitted the government dealt with persistent shortage of teachers generally in the province because of retirement and transfers of teachers.

Criticising the Election Commission of Pakistan’s ban on employment with retrospective effect from April 1, he said it would have been called a black law had it been passed by the assembly.

PML-F lawmaker’s motion rejected

The day did witness criticism from the opposition benches on some occasions, but the chair unlike previous proceedings of the ongoing session reckoned it better to adjourn the proceedings for 10 minutes.

She decided for the brief adjournment when she felt the house could witness another hullaballoo with the rejection of an adjournment motion tabled by Pakistan Muslim League-Functional’s Nusrat Abbasi.

Ms Abbasi tabled the motion regarding “recruitment of excise and taxation inspectors based on nepotism and favouritism in the province”.

However, Mr Khuhro said she had not furnished any details or proof to substantiate her claim. The chair said no such proof was given to her as well.

As the conversation between the chair and the senior minister was in progress, Ms Abbasi protested that she should have been given the chance to prove her point. Some other members from the opposition benches rose on their seats and demanded the chair allow the mover to have a word over the issue.

As the minister demanded the chair to restore decorum in the house, Ms Raza got all mikes turned off and asked Mr Khuhro to speak, but the minister waited for the opposition benches to sit back down.

The chair then used Rule 90 of the Rules of Procedure asking the house to rise to give leave to the motion. Less than one-fifth members of the total membership of the assembly rose and the motion was rejected.

The house proceedings were adjourned for Tuesday (today).

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2018