ISLAMABAD, Feb 7: The ruling coalition punished opposition parties for a protest walkout from the Senate on Monday by dropping several of their bills, resolutions and motions from the agenda in their absence.
In what appeared to be a hardly serious fag-end of a prolonged sitting that went late into night, the coalition used the opposition's absence to have some of its own motions and resolutions passed without a debate, including amendments in the house rules of procedure.
The opposition walked out of the house to protest against what opposition leader Raza Rabbani saw as a government policy to use its majority to reject all pro-worker laws proposed by the opposition and put on the agenda on what was a private members' day.
The move came after the ruling coalition refused introduction of two bills proposed by Mr Rabbani seeking to amend the Banking Companies Ordinance, 1962 to remove certain restrictions on trade unions and repeal the Removal from Service (Special Powers) Ordinance 2000, and one by PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar to amend the Pakistan Commission of Inquiry Act 1956. However, the government had earlier agreed to refer four other less important bills proposed by opposition members to concerned standing committees.
After the leader of house Wasim Sajjad told the house that the opposition was not ready to end its walkout, Senate chairman Mohammedmian Soomro agreed with Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi to drop all the bills and other motions whose authors were not present to move them.
The action meant that all the five opposition bills, three resolutions and four motions that were killed will have to be submitted by their authors again to the Senate secretariat to be put on the future agenda.
One of these five dropped bills was one from Prof Ghafoor Ahmed and four other members of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) seeking to amend the National Security Council Act 2004. Details of the amendments sought were not immediately available.
Other bills killed included one by PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar seeking to amend the Exit from Pakistan (Control) Ordinance 1981 and one by MMA's Maulana Gul Naseeb and nine other members seeking to amend the constitution - called the Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) Bill.
Later the house passed a resolution without a debate a moved by Pakistan Muslim League senator Chaudhry Mohammad Anwar Bhinder calling upon the federal government to allocate "sufficient grant in the next budget" to the Oil and Gas Development Company Ltd for the development and further extension of Sui gas to areas where it has not so far been provided.
Another resolution passed in the same manner was from a PML senator from Balochistan, Mrs Kalsoom Perveen, recommending the establishment of an oil refinery in Balochistan, with one remark by Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Resources Mir Naseer Khan Mengal that there was no restriction on setting up an oil refinery anywhere in the country.