ISLAMABAD, March 28: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement will take part in the National Assembly session when it resumes its proceedings on Monday, after staying away from the lower house session, sources told Dawn on Sunday.

The sources said the MQM had not been attending the lower house proceedings for two weeks to protest against what it considered to be deliberate attempts on the part of the government to ignore the party in the process of the drafting of the National Security Council bill.

The government is said to have used, rather successfully, a number of back-channel contacts to persuade the MQM to call off its protest and start attending the assembly proceedings.

A senior MQM leader told Dawn that the party had strong objections to a clause relating to the supervision of democracy by the security council. He said the government had agreed to remove the controversial clause after a series of discussions between the two sides that also involved the London-based leadership of the party.

The MQM leader claimed that the government had also promised to induct one more federal minister and a minister of state from the party into the federal cabinet. He said the government had already agreed to give the chairmanship of four lower house committees and three senate committees to the MQM.

Meanwhile, the sources said, the ruling alliance was facing difficulty in finalizing the names of members to be appointed chairmen of various house committees.

The ruling coalition was also unable to decide the number of new ministers to be inducted into the federal cabinet and the proportion of the representation to be given to each component party.