The bill, drafted under the Article 4 of the Local Government Ordinance, 2001, empowers the provincial chief executive to appoint chairmen of district development committees for the smooth execution of schemes identified in the Annual Development Programme.
The move caught Minister for Local Government Sardar Mohammad Idrees off guard who opposed it, saying it was an exclusive right of the government to introduce the bill in the House. None of the House committees, he said, could introduce any bill for legislation in the House.
Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs Malik Zafar Azam supported the contention of the local government minister over the issue.
He said that the special committee had been set up only to identify lacunas in the local government ordinance and its sole purpose was to suggest measures for their removal. The committee could not initiate legislation, which was the realm of the government, he added.
However, Speaker Bakht Jehan Khan, who was presiding over the session, allowed Chairman of the Committee Deputy Speaker Ikramullah Shahid to introduce the North-West Frontier Province Establishment of Provincial Development Committee Bill, 2003, in the House.
Earlier, Mr Shahid presented the special committee’s report on the inequities in powers of Nazims and councillors and the functional void caused by the absence of District Development Advisory Councils (DDAC) after the promulgation of the ordinance.
The House adopted the recommendations of the special committee, which proposed an early legislation for the execution of the ADP in the absence of the DDAC Act.
The 11-member special committee comprising local government ministers and six other treasury benches lawmakers as members, had held 10 sessions to investigate the problems identified by Abdul Akbar Khan of the PPP through an adjournment motion moved on Dec 27, 2002, and by Mr Alamzeb Khan Umarzai through a call attention notice on Jan, 1, 2003.
The special committee sought the opinions of officials of the local government and rural development, finance, planning and development, law and parliamentary affairs departments, advocate-general and prominent lawyers on the lacunas in the ordinance and fresh legislation by distributing copies of the proposed North-West Frontier Province Establishment of Provincial Development Committees Bill, 2003.
On April 29, 2003, the committee had approved the draft of the bill inthe light of changes made by the law department.
Presenting the report along with the proposed bill, Ikramullah Shahid asked the House to adopt the committee’s report along with the bill. The House honoured his request, but when Mr Shahid laid the bill before the House for its consideration, the local government minister opposed it.
PPP lawmaker Abdul Akbar Khan, speaking on a point of order, said that the committee wanted to empower the government, which was engaged in a row with Nazims on the administrative and financial powers, but the government was not ready to call a spade a spade.
Bashir Ahmed Bilour of the Awami National Party, Anwar Kamal Khan of the PML(N), Syed Mureed Kazim of the PPP(S), and Sahahzada Gistasip Khan and others thanked the chair for allowing Mr Shahid to table the bill.
Some of the lawmakers were of the opinion that the bill might cause a controversy as it was an infringement on the powers of the President, who could alone bring about any change into the local government ordinance.
Later, the Speaker invited Mr Bilour to initiate discussion on the Tameer-i-Sarhad Programme, under which the NWFP government had allocated Rs5 million for each MPA for development in their respective constituency.
Mr Bilour complained that the government had not yet released any amount for the development schemes identified by him. He said he did not know when the government would execute these schemes.
The PPP lawmaker said that successive undemocratic governments had introduced such development programmes before the 1979. These programmes, he claimed, were based on corruption to bridge the gap caused by the absence of elected governments.