KARACHI: Members of three opposition political parties and women members of the fourth opposition party staged a walkout from the Sindh Assembly against an idiom and gestures — considered immoral as well as threatening by the protesters — used by law and parliamentary affairs minister Nisar Ahmad Khuhro while responding to a woman legislator during the question hour on Friday.

The issue pertained to Sindh Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (STEVTA) and human rights departments of which Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah is in charge, but the answers were instead given by parliamentary secretary Shahid Thahim and minister Khuhro.

Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) legislator Nusrat Abbasi said the human rights department did not do much concrete work such as protecting the rights of women and children and all it did was join NGOs in organising seminars, walks, etc. Minister Khuhro in response started to read out, from the Constitution, the basic human rights that had been guaranteed.

Ms Abbasi asked the minister not to teach them the Constitution as “we have studied it and know what was guaranteed by it”. In response Mr Khuhro used a particular idiom and said that if they had read the Constitution they would not have supported Gen Pervez Musharaf and his dictatorial rule, to which Ms Abbasi objected and Mr Khuhro then further made a gesture while on his chair.

The idiom and the gesture were considered immoral and threatening by Ms Abbasi; she and her party colleagues started to protest and were soon supported by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) legislators. However, speaker Agha Siraj Durrani did not listen to them and asked them to sit down.

As a result, PML-F, PML-N and PTI legislators staged a walkout from the assembly. The women members of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) also joined the walkout.

Speaker Durrani asked MQM legislator Saifuddin Khalid to speak on his issue, who asked the speaker to listen to Ms Abbasi and the other legislators’ protest. Then leader of the opposition Khawaja Izhar-ul-Hassan urged the speaker to sort out the issue between the opposition and the minister.

Minister Khuhro instantly, on a point of clarification, said that he had not said or done anything that was unparliamentary to which speaker Durrani said that he had already expunged the entire episode.

Responding to a question asked three years back by MQM legislator Heer Ismail Soho regarding the torture of Jamna Menghwar, a woman belonging to a religious minority and a mother of four, by an influential wadera in Chhor, Umerkot, Mr Khuhro said the Umerkot police chief had reported that the case was registered but during investigation the allegations could not be proved against the accused, so the case was disposed of as non-cognizable (NC).

MQM legislator Sardar Ahmed, who is a retired bureaucrat and held many senior positions including that of the Sindh chief secretary, said the police could have declared it as NC and should not have registered the case, but once registered the case could be disposed of as not proved but not as NC. Mr Khuhro insisted that it was disposed of as NC.

Earlier, the speaker had also asked Mr Thahim to ask his department to provide accurate information to the assembly.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2016