ISLAMABAD: After failure of the government to take religious parties on board over the two pro-women bills, opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has started efforts to rally their support for the laws to be taken up by a joint sitting of parliament on Monday.

PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar told Dawn on Saturday said that he had held a meeting with Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman on the issue and the latter had shown a “positive response”.

Mr Babar said that during the Friday night meeting he briefed the JUI-F leader on the objectives of anti-rape and anti-honour killing bills.

He said the maulana listened to him with patience and assured him that he would respond to him after discussing the matter with legal experts and other leaders of his party.

“The maulana sounded positive and was open to discussion contrary to the impression of being rigid,” Mr Babar said, expressing the hope that the JUI-F would support the bills already passed by the Senate two years ago.

The PPP leader said that the JUI-F had already voted in support of the two bills in the Senate. He pointed out that the Senate committee which had approved the two drafts was headed by JUI-F member Talha Mehmood.

Mr Babar said that murders in the name of honour had largely gone unpunished because in most cases both the accused and victim had the same guardian (wali) who promptly pardoned the accused. The bills, he added, sought to remove a major lacuna in the law by making honour killing non-compoundable.

Sources in the JUI-F told Dawn that after his meeting with the PPP senator, Maulana Fazl had discussed the issue with his close aides, including former senator and a lawyer Kamran Murtaza.

Talking to Dawn, Mr Murtaza said that during the meeting on Saturday they had reviewed the bills minutely and the JUI-F chief would probably make an announcement on the matter at a function in Multan on Sunday.

The Anti-Honour Killings Laws (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, 2015, and the Anti-Rape Laws (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, 2015, were piloted by former PPP Senator Sughra Imam as private members’ bills.

However, due to failure of the government to get these laws passed from the National Assembly with six other bills within the stipulated 90 days, it had to bring them on the agenda of the joint sitting of parliament which had actually been planned to get the PIA bill passed.

The first bill pertains to preventing killing of women in the name of honour by making the crime non-compoundable and the other seeks to make the DNA test a compulsory part of procedure in investigating cases of rape.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2016