QUETTA: The Baloc­histan government late Wednesday evening withdrew its notification about appointing chief secretary as the head of a parliamentary committee on coronavirus and assigned him the role of committee secretary.

According to a notification issued by the services and general administration department, the chief minister will be the convener of the committee on Covid-19, while members of the committee will remain the same.

Former Senate chairman and PPP leader Mian Raza Rabbani had earlier expressed surprise over the April 6 notification of the Balochistan government regarding the constitution of a parliamentary committee with the chief secretary as its convener.

Mr Rabbani had urged Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan Alyani to withdraw the April 6 notification, stating that a parliamentary committee with six provincial ministers as its members could not be headed by a person who was not a member of the house as per rules and international parliamentary practices.

He said it was not appropriate that elected members should be made subservient to the civil bureaucracy.

“Such a parliamentary committee is unheard of in parliamentary practice and amounts to demeaning the democratic process,” declared Mr Rabbani.

Published in Dawn, April 9th, 2020