ISLAMABAD: The government on Tuesday admitted on the floor of the Senate that it was still in dark about the alleged involvement of Pakistanis in the attack on the Pathankot airbase in India.

Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed, who was responding to questions on behalf of Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, found himself in hot waters when he first failed to give satisfactory replies to the questions put by the members on the issue and later admitted that the government had no information at all since the “sensitive issue was being dealt by the intelligence agencies and secrecy was also involved in it”.

The minister’s remarks invited the wrath of Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani, who asked the minister whether the intelligence agencies were “above the federal government”.

“Do you know what you are saying? Can there be anything secret even for the federal government? You have left me speechless,” Mr Rabbani said.

The nervous minister said the agencies were not above the government, but so far the government had not received any report from the intelligence agencies on the matter.

Sensing that the minister was in trouble, Leader of the House Raja Zafarul Haq took the floor and said it was the government’s responsibility to decide what it could share with the public and what should be treated as classified information.

Mr Haq alleged that India was in the habit of levelling false allegations against Pakistan whenever some militant attack took place in the country. He, however, also did not categorically state if the government had received any report about the attack.

Farhatullah Babar, who had actually asked the question, regretted that several months had passed since India had provided some evidence about the involvement of Pakistanis in the attack and yet the government was clueless.

The Senate chairman turned down Mr Babar’s request to defer the question till the time the interior minister himself came to the house to respond to the query.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2016