Pakistan Gender News Voice of Gender News From Pakistan
NAVEED BUTT
ISLAMABAD: The ‘Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, 2012’ for women protection would be presented for adoption in the next session of the National Assembly to be held on April 25, it is learnt.
Senate has already unanimously passed the bill.
Nilofar Bakhtiar presented it in the upper house of parliament.
When former Senator Nilofar Bakhtiar of Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) had presented the Bill for introduction in the last session of the Upper House (Senate), she urged Senate’s Deputy Chairman Mir Jan Muhammad Jamali to pass it without sending it to the concerned Standing Committee.
All Senate members had supported Nilofar’s point of view.
When contacted, Nilofar Bakhtiar said that the bill would provide protection to women, adding that before referring a case of domestic dispute to a magistrate, a reconciliation committee, headed by a counsellor, would be authorised to try to resolve the dispute.
A similar bill was also presented in the recent joint sitting of parliament, but it could not be passed because of PML-N and JUI-F’s strong opposition.
According to sources in the National Assembly Secretariat, a Motion of Thanks would be presented in the House to start debate on the presidential address to the joint sitting of parliament.
The issues of power outages, price hikes, the recent increase in petroleum price and cabinet’s expansion would also be discussed in the next session of the National Assembly.
Sources in the PML-N said that their party was trying to press the government to submit the national accountability bill in the lower house of parliament, adding that it had been pending for the past three years.
