Parties asked to give electoral tickets to minorities

Lahore :Government must immediately make public the minorities' data that is being collected through the sixth population census and the parliament is urged to replace undemocratic method of filling the minority seats of assemblies with an inclusive and democratic method”, this was the crux of a seminar titled “Shrinking Political Space for Minorities” held in a local hotel on Wednesday.
The seminar was organised by Pattan Development Organisation. The members of Punjab Assembly and a large of number representatives of minorities from across Punjab participated in the event.
Prof Dr Hassan Amir Shah, vice-chancellor of the Government Collage University , Lahore, while delivering his key note speech on minorities and education said there remained a huge absence of minority academia in the country. He also said his institution made sure that jobs were filled on merit. Peter Jacob said since the introduction of joint electorate system in the country the space for minorities had widened.
Pattan's National Coordinator Sarwar Bari said political leaders should issue tickets to minority candidates in areas where minorities had substantive vote bank. He said there were 28 National Assembly constituencies where minorities had votes between 50,000 and 255,000. In these constituencies the parties could nominate candidates of minorities. In order to deepen social cohesion across minorities and majority, he presented a proposal that these constituencies could also be declared as multi-member units. In this regard, he gave the example of union council elections (2001-2009) when each union council had multiple members, including minorities, women, peasants, workers, etc.
The minority parliamentarians spoke about the barriers and challenges they faced on the floor of the House. DIG Operations Amir Zulfiqar said that interfaith harmony was essential to minimise the extremism in Punjab as it was a difficult and challenging task. Hussain Naqi said all the civil society was calling each other “Kafir” and they were not realising what harm they were causing to the co-existence.