Home minister fails to hide blushes over failure to answer queries

Karachi

Home Minister Sohail Anwar Siyal faced an embarrassing situation in the Sindh Assembly on Thursday when he failed to provide a satisfactory response to a question about an anomaly pointed out by an opposition lawmaker in the written replies to queries regarding his department.

The anomaly was pointed out by Muttahida Qaumi Movement lawmaker Heer Ismail Soho when other legislators were asking supplementary questions about the written information provided to the house on the number of cars and motorcycles snatched in Karachi between 1 July and December 31, 2012. 

This was the first time the house took up the question hour related to the home department after Sindh got its new home minister in May last year. Soho said that when a total of 66 vehicles (one car and 65 motorcycles) had been snatched in the city in those six months, how police could have claimed recovering 104 vehicles.

When Siyal failed to explain properly, he said he was the home minister and his job was to maintain law and order in the province and not to rectify any typo error in written responses presented to the house. 

Later, he said the number of the recovered vehicles stood at 104 in the same period of 2012, as vehicles snatched or stolen in earlier times were also found by police.

The assembly witnessed quite an amusing situation as opposition lawmakers often burst into laughter when Siyal failed to answer most of the supplementary questions. All he could think of in his defence was to say that the questions were “fresh” and such queries had to be formally submitted again in writing by the lawmakers for getting their answers in the house on a formal basis.

The vocal opposition legislator of Pakistan Muslim League-Functional, Nusrat Seher Abbasi, repeatedly said the home minister could not respond to supplementary queries and was relying on “paper chits” containing requisite information being supplied to him from officers of the home department sitting in the gallery of officers and speakers.

When Deputy Speaker Shehla Raza tried to step in to spare the home minister more blushes, opposition lawmakers tried to prevail upon the situation, saying that the chair should not unduly meddle in the situation and should let the home minister respond to the queries on his own.

The house was told that 422 cars and 1,642 motorcycles were snatched in different towns of the city from July to December 2012, and the number of recovered two-wheelers and four-wheelers stood at 1,563 and 580 culprits had been arrested by police. Gulshan-e-Iqbal witnessed the most alarming situation during this period with 49 cars and 461 motorcycles taken away, while in Shah Faisal Town 79 cars and 343 motorcycles were snatched.

The house was informed that 18 persons drowned in Keenjhar Lake in Thatta in four years. Three persons drowned in 2011, four in 2012, six in 2013 and five in 2014.

From 2008 to 2013, 340 criminals were handed down the capital punishment, while 1,657 were given life imprisonment across Sindh. 

Between 2008 and 2013, the capital punishment handed down to 38 convicts was converted into life imprisonment.