President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday assented to three bills on the advice of the prime minister, including one for establishing a statutory body to protect and promote the rights of minority communities in the country.<\/p>\n
According to a statement released by the Presidency, Zardari approved three pieces of legislation on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.<\/p>\n
These include the Qanun-e-Shahadat (Amendment) Bill 2025, the King Hamad University of Nursing and Associated Medical Sciences Bill 2025 and the National Commission for Minorities Rights Bill 2025.<\/p>\n
The statement added that the Daanish Schools Authority Bill 2025 was sent back to the premier \u201cin view of the need for provincial consultation\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the case of establishment of Daanish schools in the provinces, prior consultation with the respective provincial governments is essential,\u201d the statement quoted the president as saying.<\/p>\n
The Daanish Schools Authority Bill 2025 was passed with a majority vote during a joint session of Parliament earlier this month amid stiff opposition from both sides of the aisle.<\/p>\n
The opposition was based on fears that a provision giving the law an overriding effect would affect the anti-Ahmadiyya ordinance promulgated in 1984.<\/p>\n
A motion seeking leave of the House to take up the bill for immediate consideration was opposed by around one-third of the members present in the joint sitting. A total of 160 members voted in favour of the bill while 79 opposed it.<\/p>\n
The bill was, however, passed with certain amendments, including the omission of the clause giving it overriding effect and a change to withdraw the suo motu powers earlier proposed for the National Commission for Minorities\u2019 Rights.<\/p>\n
During the session, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar made it clear that the bill would neither dilute the anti-Ahmadiyya provisions nor affect any court judgement. \u201cNeither the law nor the Constitution, nor our conscience, allows us to make a proposal that contradicts the Holy Quran and Sunnah,\u201d he remarked.<\/p>\n
He said the Constitution and the state had declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims, but they did not accept this and therefore did not fall within the ambit of the bill. He said that when the decision declaring Ahmadis non-Muslims was challenged, the Supreme Court had held that the protection under Article 20 of the Constit\u00adution was not available to those who did not recognise their non-Muslim status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday assented to three bills on the advice of the prime minister, including one for establishing a statutory body to protect and promote the rights of minority communities in the country. According to a statement released by the Presidency, Zardari approved three pieces of legislation on the advice of Prime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14257,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14255\/revisions\/14257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}