ISLAMABAD: After submitting another requisition notice to the National Assembly secretariat for summoning of the session of the lower house of parliament, the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is now awaiting the issuance of a production order for its president Shahbaz Sharif by Speaker Asad Qaiser.

Talking to Dawn here on Thursday, PML-N spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb said the requisition notice signed by 88 opposition members had been submitted soon after the prorogation of the assembly session on Nov 9 and they hoped the speaker would issue the production order of Mr Sharif as per parliamentary traditions and in accordance with the assembly rules like he did previously.

Ms Aurangzeb said that she had waited for long to personally meet the speaker, but he did not come to the office on that day, forcing her to hand over the request for Mr Sharif’s production order to the officials of the assembly secretariat.

Wants speaker to issue Shahbaz Sharif’s production order

She said they had submitted a five-point agenda with the notice for discussion during the requisitioned session.

The agenda includes a discussion on “use of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as a tool for political coercion, government’s 100-day performance, economic situation in the country, especially the alarming price hikes and inflation, progress of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the law and order situation in the country”.

Under the rules, the speaker is bound to convene the session 14 days after submission of the requisition notice by Nov 23.

The PML-N spokesperson said the party had also decided to move an adjournment motion seeking discussion and explanation from the government over the martyrdom of Superintendent of Police (SP) Tahir Khan Dawar in Afghanistan.

SP Dawar, who was chief of Peshawar police’s rural circle, was kidnapped in the G-10/4 area of Islamabad on October 26, and his body was later found in a remote area of the Afghan province of Nangarhar.

Ms Aurangzeb ridiculed the government for blaming the faulty cameras of Islamabad’s Safe City Project for the incident, which had actually exposed its own failure to protect the life of a police officer.

Meanwhile, Chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Law and Justice Javed Abbasi, who also belongs to the PML-N, on Thursday cancelled the committee’s meeting scheduled for Friday on the request of NAB chairman retired Justice Javed Iqbal who was to appear before the committee for a comprehensive briefing “regarding working and performance of the bureau”.

The committee had called the NAB chairman with the complete record and data of cases currently being investigated and disposed of by the bureau since its inception about 19 years ago, particularly in the last three years.

Talking to Dawn, Mr Abbasi said that he had received a request from NAB to delay the meeting for one week as the chairman would be busy in Lahore. Moreover, he said, some of the committee members had also already requested him to postpone the meeting as they wanted to go to their respective constituencies after the Senate session.

Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2018