LAHORE: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) vice-chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi says that the discord over the bill seeking changes to the process of registration of seminaries may further escalate and serve as an additional factor for political instability in the country.
Mr Qureshi, who is incarcerated in Kot Lakhpat Jail, has expressed these concerns in an open letter titled “Registration of seminaries — a self-inflicted wound”, that has been shared with Dawn on Sunday.
In the letter, he says JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman is insisting on presidential assent to the bill recently passed by both house of the parliament, along with the 26th constitutional amendment.
However, he sajd, some government ministers, along with a couple of members of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) had started voicing their opposition to the controversial bill.
He states that a unanimous resolution was passed at the conference organised by one section of the ulema, asking the federal government to maintain the current system of Madressah registration.
He said Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui (of the MQM-P) at the conference had asserted that the rollback of the 2019 agreement was not acceptable to his party. “If that is the case, then the question arises, why did his party vote for the bill introduced by the government,” he commented and asked whether the ministry of law was unaware of the 2019 legislation, when it vetted and approved the proposal draft.
Mr Qureshi says President Asif Ali Zardari had sent the bill back to the parliament without according his assent to it, identifying some flaws in the piece of legislation. He says Maulana Fazl claimed to have spent five hours in convincing the leaderships of both the PPP and the PML-N at Jati Umra, in the presence of the law minister, and “succeeded” in evolving a consensus.
“Why were the flaws being pointed out at this stage, which were not tabled and discussed with the JUI-F when the amendment of a breakthrough legislation was made,” Mr Qureshi asked.
