HYDERABAD, Feb 6: The Sindh Democratic Forum (SDF), a civil society group of intellectuals, technocrats and thinkers, has suggested 170 amendments to the country’s constitution for the restoration of provincial autonomy.

The SDF proposed the amendments in a 17-page communication dispatched recently to the chairman of National Reconstruction Bureau Danial Aziz while presenting Sindh's point of view on provincial autonomy.

The document said that Pakistan faced constitutional, social, political and economic crisis throwing into question the very viability of the state as a democratic and progressive country.

Signed by the forum’s convenor Abrar Kazi and Secretary Zulfiqar Halepoto it drew the chairman’s attention towards increasing gulf between the rich and poor, crumbling state of service delivery, appalling law and order situation, pathetic record of human rights and abduction and disappearance of political activists, which it said were indicative of total collapse of basic parameters of governance.

The communication stressed that the thrust of constitutional amendments was on the implementation of 1940 Resolution in letter and spirit ensuring that all the decisions about inter-provincial and inter-governmental affairs were to be taken through consensus and all the decisions about the affairs of federation were to be taken with the approval of Senate.

Proposing extensive powers for the Senate, the document urged to make the institution a guardian of the federation and proposed that the federating units should have sovereignty over their territories and natural resources on the surface as well as beneath the earth and sovereignty over finances and taxation on maximum heads.