SIFC infringing provincial autonomy, says Rabbani

ISLAMABAD: Former Senate chairman Raza Rabbani has said the Special Investment Facilitation Council is infringing the provincial autonomy.

“The SIFC has been created through a notification which does not allow it to take up education or matters ancillary thereto,” he said while condemning the SIFC for taking up the question of out-of-school children and the education policy. He said education was a devolved subject from the Government of India Act, 1935, but was usurped by the federal government. The 18th Amendment, with the deletion of the Concurrent List, from the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution 1973, removed any doubts, if any existed. “If at all any coordination is required on the question of out-of-school children, the constitutional forum is the CCI (Council of Common Interests),” he said.

He said the federal government could only take up the education policy to the extent of the federal territory and not the provinces. “If any coordination in the policy is required, the CCI is the constitutional forum and not the SIFC,” he said, adding that the federal government must realise that Pakistan was a participatory federation under the Constitution and not a one unit.