Daily Times

LAHORE: A standing committee of the Punjab Assembly tabled its recommendations on the historic Sikh Marriage Bill on Friday.

With Speaker Rana Iqbal in the chair, Punjab Assembly session started one hour and 11 minutes late to its scheduled time and soon adjourned after adopting the standing committee’s report on the marriage bill over lack of quorum.

During the proceedings of the House, when the speaker announced to take up the question hour session on the Forest, Wildlife and Fisheries department opposition benches pointed out that the secretary concerned was not present in the official gallery. The speaker took the serious notice of the secretary’s absence and issued an advice that he should reach the official gallery within 15 minutes of face action.

The speaker also suspended the session for a while and took up the report of the standing committee on the historic ‘The Punjab Anand Karaj Bill 2017’ also known as Sikh Marriage Bill, which was moved in the House on Oct 24, 2017.

The report of the standing committee was moved by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) MPA and first Sikh member in the Punjab Assembly Ramesh Singh Arora. However, Dr Murad Rass of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) pointed out the quorum and the government failed to complete the agenda of the day.

Parliamentary sources confirmed to Daily Times that the bill would be passed by House very soon.

Once passed, the bill would enable the Sikh community to have a personal law for the first time for registration of their marriages. Currently, the marriages of the Sikh community have religious status but they do not have the legal status.

According to sources, more than 15,000 Sikhs are living and practicing their religious beliefs in Pakistan but their marriages and dissolution of marriages are not being registered in the government’s record, creating problems for them across the world.

In 1909, British rulers in India passed ‘The Anand Marriage Act’ to validate marriages in Sikhism but successive governments in Pakistan after the partition had not improved it to address the remaining aspects of Sikh community’s rituals.

The fresh bill from the Sikh Community legislator in the Punjab Assembly was not opposed from both—the treasury or the opposition benches and it was hoped that the bill would be passed unanimously from the House.

Published in Daily Times, March 10^th 2018.