Daily Times

LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan leader Senator Sirajul Haq has condemned the government’s move to bring an ordinance against the plea bargaining and said it was a dishonest step besides being an insult to the parliament.

In a statement, he said that if the government sincerely wanted to end plea bargaining, it would have moved the issue before the parliament. He said that the government was not taking the parliament in to confidence on important issues and was busy in one wheeling.

He said that the government had set up a committee comprising members of the Senate and the National Assembly, to decide the issue but so far not a single meeting of the committee had been held. But now the government had decided to bring an ordinance overnight, he questioned.

He claimed that the demand for ending plea bargain system had been moved by the Jamaat and it had presented three bills in this regard. However, he said that instead of trying to evolve consensus on the issue, the government had all of a sudden decided to bring an ordinance.

He said that dozens of plunderers had availed the plea bargain provision and had availed remission of billions of rupees and there was need to review their cases. He said that this was public money and no individual could write these off.