ISLAMABAD: Senator Farhatullah Babar today proposed that the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) be disbanded and the 100 million allocated to it be transferred to the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW).
Taking part in the budget debate in the senate the PPP senator said that the CII had already submitted is final report to the parliament in 1997 and had become dangerously irrelevant. It has no constitutional role to play and frustrated with its controversial pronouncements some people call it “medieval non-sense at public expense”.
He also took exception to the allocation of 250 million rupees made for a new body National Institute of Human Rights being set up under an executive order. There already existed National Commission of Human Rights Commission (NCHR) set up under an Act of the Parliament as an independent, powerful and autonomous body, he said.
The Act provides for a special Fund to enable the Commission perform its functions and said that 250 million allocated to the new body be transferred to this special Fund.
On this Chairman Raza Rabbani referred the matter to the Senate Finance Committee directing it to examine the issue of setting up a parallel human rights body for what he said “some blue eyed boy”.
Senator Farhatullah Babar said that the federation had been gravely undermined by making the Economic Corridor Project controversial.
This was evident from the allocations made and pace of work on each the western and eastern routes of the Corridor, he said and warned against the decisions taken at the May 28, 2015 APC under the Prime Minister.
He pleaded for special allocations for addressing issues in climate change, environmental degradation and population for sustainable development.
He said that he did not blame the Finance Minster for not being able to give a welfare budget. We are a security driven state where every issues is viewed from the prism of security and not welfare of the people, he said.
Earlier taking part in discussion on the adjournment motion on recent testing by India of intercept missile he said that arms race in the region will benefit no one.
The policy of supporting non state actors for the advancement of certain security objectives has also spurred arms race in the region, he said and called for an honest review of the security and defence policies.
The civilian and political leadership must wake up and retrieve the space in formulating security policies already dangerously ceded to the security establishment, he said.