ISLAMABAD, Dec 1: Senate Chairman Mohammadmian Soomro has rejected a motion of People’s Party Parliamentarians Senator Mian Raza Rabbani calling to be taken up for discussion in the next session. The motion sought the withdrawal of the Industrial Relations Ordinance (IRO) 2002.

The PPP senator told Dawn here on Monday that he received a formal letter from the Senate chairman a day before Eidul Fitr that the motion moved by him on the IRO-2002 had been rejected as it did not “deal with one subject and was argumentative”.

Expressing his surprise over the stated reason, Mr Rabbani said the motion dealt with only one subject and it was not argumentative at all.

Severely criticizing Mr Soomro, the PPP senator said: “The Senate chairman had taken it upon himself to kill all public-oriented motions in his chamber.”

He said it seemed that the Senate chairman believed the Legal Framework Order was not a sufficient curb on the functioning of the Senate, in particular, and parliament, in general. “In his latest attempt to play as government’s goalkeeper, the Senate chairman has killed a private member’s resolution on erroneous and mala fide interpretation of the rules, in which the IRO-2002 had been condemned and its withdrawal sought immediately.”

Mr Rabbani said through that motion he had also demanded of the government to call a tripartite meeting of the workers, employers and the government to make a new law.

The IRO-2002, he further said, was promulgated as an ordinance on Aug 26, 2002, and it had been given a cover under the LFO.

Mr Rabbani said the manner in which the Senate chairman had been killing the motions of the opposition members in chamber, it would be appropriate to say that he had acquired a nickname of “chamber killer”.