ISLAMABAD: In an unusual show of concord to settle discord, the government and opposition parties in the National Assembly agreed yesterday to set up a multi-party house committee to probe complaints of rigging in the May 11 elections and suggest electoral reforms to evolve better checks.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan assured the house that all government agencies would help the committee in carrying out its investigation, which he suggested cover up to 40 National Assembly constituencies in all the four provinces of the country rather than just four constituencies as demanded by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan.
With agreement from both the treasury and opposition benches, Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi, who chaired the proceedings at the time, asked leaders of all parliamentary groups in the house to name their party representatives for a meeting with the house speaker yesterday to formulate the proposed committee’s terms of reference a task he said could be completed in three days.
Chaudhry Nisar proposed the formation of the committee after informing the house about a letter he said he had received from the PTI deputy chairman, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, asking the minister to follow through on an offer he made during the budget session in Junefor a probe in up to 40 constituencies in response to Imran Khan’s demand for a verification of ballots in at least four constituencies by comparing voters` thumb impressions on counterfoils with those on their computerised national identity cards. “Four seats are too few, let it be for 20 seats or 40 seats,” he said, adding that 20 seats should be referred for a probe by the government and 20 by the opposition from all the four provinces.
The minister told the house that the PTI letter had suggested terms of reference for the committee, some of which, he said, were acceptable to the government while others could be negotiated. Chaudhry Nisar’s suggestion was endorsed by Qureshi, who said his party had ‘no objection to the proposal’, then by former speaker Fehmida Mirza from the Pakistan Peoples Party who called it a ‘very positive’ move, and lastly by opposition leader Khurshid Ahmed Shah, who said it should have been done much earlier, yet he would agree with what he called a case of `better late than never. Internews
