Bills passed by NA can’t be withdrawn: Farrukh Habib

ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib on Friday said that the bills passed in the National Assembly in two days could not be withdrawn/

Speaking here at a news conference, Farrukh said that the attitude of the opposition towards the passage of the Electoral Reforms Bill was regrettable, whereas a strong democracy of any country is based on clean and transparent elections. He said Imran Khan, who had introduced neutral umpire in cricket, wanted to end the noise of election rigging, adding that all the parties including PPP and JUI had objections to the 2013 elections and PTI also raised its voice against it. He said that in the case of democracy, elections of PMLN and PPP supported that Senate should be held by open ballot but have not implemented it in 10 years.

The minister pointed out that in the 10 years of governments from 2008 to 2018, PMLN and PPP had walked out, boycotted or hurled insults against each other in the House. He said that the bill pending from 2019, 2020 had been passed through the process, the opposition is only interested in the NRO bill, which is not going to be given.

He said that the government had approached the senior politicians, the Speaker of the National Assembly and the opposition but the attitude of the opposition was of non-cooperation. He said that the PMLN ministers who were in office during their tenure should take a look at their collars before objecting to overseas Pakistanis.