Alleged rigging: NA speaker to summon MPs body meeting

ISLAMABAD: Speaker National Assembly Asad Qaisar is expected to summon the first meeting of the parliamentary committee to probe the allegations of rigging in the general election, 2018 by the end next week most probably in the first week of November.

The speaker National Assembly had already notified 30-members of the parliamentary committee that equal representation of treasury and opposition benches from both the houses of the Parliament—Senate and National Assembly.

In the first meeting of the parliamentary committee to probe the allegations of the rigging in the general Elections, 2018 was to elect its chairman and the government has decided that Defence Minister Pervez Khattak will lead the committee.

Following the elections, the meetings of the parliamentary committee would be started to finalise the terms of reference for the parliamentary committee. While on the other hand, Senate’s Committee on Interior had also completed 3/4th of the investigations and submits its report in the Senate last month and requested that this report should be shared with the committee.

When contacted Chairman Senate’s Committee on Interior Rehman Malik, who is also member of the Parliamentary Committee on general Elections 2018, said being a chairman of the Senate Committee on Interior he had placed its final report before the Senate covering salient features of achievements of the committee, identification of grey areas, TORs for further probe and recommendations which will serve a purpose of guidelines of newly constituted Parliamentary Commission. “Though he was ready to share the Senate’s committee on Interior report yet the Parliamentary Committee will decide whether it may adopt the report or not,” he said.

Rehman Malik said that the committee recommends that the Parliamentary Commission should ensure a follow up of the already written letter to the prime minister of Pakistan in his capacity as Minister for Interior for constitution of the technical experts committee to probe into RTS failure.

He said that the committee recommends that an independent, transparent and highly professional forensic auditing body of international repute may be hired to conduct investigation of all the above “Grey Areas” under the umbrella of “Areas of Investigations/TORs” already identified by the committee.