- File Photo

ISLAMABAD: The government claimed in a tumultuous National Assembly on Friday to have put its act together for creating a Seraiki province in southern Punjab, for which it said a constitution amendment bill would be moved in the next session of the house along with another, apparently less promising, bill for turning Hazara division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa into a separate province.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and its allies now possessed the required two-thirds majority in parliament to pass a constitutional amendment to carve out a new province of Seraiki-speaking southern Punjab but did not have the same consensus on a Hazara province, which is opposed by its coalition partner Awami National Party (ANP), which also heads the coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Therefore, he suggested that demands for the two provinces be addressed in separate bills so “the consensus we have evolved on Seraiki province” was not spoiled.

That did not end a rumpus continuing from the start of the day’s proceedings over reluctance of Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi to order a vote on a controversial resolution authored by another government ally, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which had been debated for two days but not formally moved or put on the agenda.

But then, as an apparent outcome of some hectic consultations within the house among coalition parties, PPP chief whip Khursheed Ahmed Shah said “we have agreed between us” to bring two separate bills on the first day of the next session of the National Assembly, pouring cold water on the uproar before the second winter session of the house was prorogued just as a drizzle outside the parliament house broke a long spell of drought in Islamabad.

Mr Shah, who is also the minister for religious affairs, gave no date for the next session although an earlier tentative calendar had set it for Jan 16.

The prime minister, in his speech earlier after consulting several lawmakers who had converged on his desk amid slogan-chanting from MQM benches for a vote, said the PPP had been seeking to build consensus on creating new provinces like Seraiki and Hazara and that “we came to you” after some disappointments elsewhere like a failure of repeated moves to raise the matter of Seraiki province in the Punjab provincial assembly, which is dominated by the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N, which heads the provincial government.

“We have arranged two-thirds majority (here),” he said about the position of his coalition in the 342-seat National Assembly and the 100-seat Senate and added: “We don’t want to waste this consensus.”

He said his party was not opposed to the creation of a Hazara or any other province, but asked the advocates of the new provinces to evolve a consensus “as we did on Seraiki province”.

And in a brief speech later before the chair read out the president’s order for proroguing the house, Mr Shah reiterated his party’s “respect for the sentiments of our coalition partners” in what seemed as an effort to soothe the MQM anger over its resolution not being put to vote and of the ANP for PPP’s adherence to an earlier commitment with its largest partner in the coalition, Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q), to support the demand for a Hazara province.

The process towards the passage of the two separate bills will begin after their presentation in the house on the first day of the next session, he said, and added: “And then the matter will go to provincial assemblies and whatever decision is taken by the provincial assemblies will be acceptable to all.”

Article 238 of the constitution says that a constitution amendment bill passed by parliament “which would have the effect of altering the limits of a province” could not be sent to the president for an assent necessary for its being effective “unless it has been passed by the provincial assembly of that province by the votes of not less than two-thirds of its total membership.”

The PML-N, which is the dominant party in the Punjab assembly and which has repeatedly said it will not oppose a new province, whether in south Punjab or in Hazara, if created for administrative reasons rather than linguistic considerations, could find it politically hard to block an amendment passed by parliament on Seraiki province just a year before the next general election is due.

But the ANP, which draws its strength mainly from Pakhtun, or Pashtun, population of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is least likely to endorse such an amendment because it sees calls for a Hazara province or another in the province’s Malakand division, as an MQM revenge for often violent clashes between the followers of the two parties in Karachi or a retaliation of others against its success in getting the new name of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for what formerly was the North West Frontier Province as an acknowledgement of the Pakhtun entity though the Eighteenth Amendment.

During the debate in the National Assembly, demands had also been made for creating another province of the purely Pakhtun and least populated Federally Administered Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan and merging two districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Dera Ismail Khan division with the proposed Seraiki province.