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Published 17 Feb, 2014 07:22am

PA sitting delayed to facilitate PPP-MQM meeting

KARACHI: Senior legislators of the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement will meet on Monday morning before the session of the Sindh Assembly to sort out the issue of a privilege motion of the latter’s lawmakers against a police officer.

Sources said that Speaker Sindh Assembly Agha Siraj Durrani has changed the timing of the assembly sitting to facilitate the meeting.

The Sindh Assembly session was earlier scheduled to resume on Monday at 10am. However, a notification issued by the speaker on Sunday stated that the session would now be held at 2pm on Monday. The notification cited no reason for delaying the session.

It said: “In exercise of powers conferred upon the speaker under Rule 29 of Rules of Procedure of the Provincial Assembly of Sindh, I, Agha Siraj Khan Durrani, Speaker, Provincial Assembly of Sindh, do hereby adjourn the timing of sitting of the House which was being held on Monday, the 17th February, 2014 at 10.00 a.m. now, it will be held on Monday, the 17th February, 2014 at 2:00 p.m.”

On Friday, the speaker had ruled that Senior Sindh Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Dr Sikander Mandhro of the PPP and MQM’s parliamentary party leader Syed Sardar Ahmed and Leader of the Opposition Syed Faisal Subzwari would meet before the session to decide amicably the issue of admissibility of the privilege motion.

MQM’s Khwaja Izhar-ul-Hassan and Abdul Haseeb had moved the privilege motion, which has been on the order of the day since Feb 4.

In the motion, the MQM lawmakers had recalled an incident that took place on 12th Rabi-ul-Awwal, Jan 14, when they with an MNA and members of their coordination committee were going to an MQM camp at the Numaish traffic intersection. They were stopped at Grumandir by a police team headed by ASP-Ferozabad Akhtar Farooq and were not allowed to proceed further despite they informed the ASP that being elected representatives it was their privilege to go to their camp.

According to the privilege motion, the ASP used foul language and said that he did not care about the privilege of MPAs. It was demanded in the privilege motion that the misbehaviour of the said ASP amounted to committing breach of privilege and as such the matter be referred to the house for taking immediate action against the ASP.

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