Daily Times

Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani has summoned a session of the Upper House on July 23 on the requisition of the opposition, according to a notification issued by the Senate Secretariat on Saturday.

The session shall convene in the Parliament building in Islamabad at 3pm, the notification read.

The Senate Secretariat had earlier turned down the opposition’s request for calling a session of the Upper House to present a no-confidence motion against Sanjrani. Senator Sherry Rehman had questioned the turning down of the request after a span for four days and called it a delaying tactic. Opposition’s nominee for the Senate top slot Hasil Bizenjo had also challenged the objection and claimed that the opposition had required numbers to win the no-confidence motion against Sanjrani.

Prior to announcing the summoning of the session, Sanjrani wrote a letter to the opposition on Friday in order to respond to their contentions surrounding the requisitioned session and a no-confidence motion seeking his removal. In the letter, he clarified that the removal of the chairman or deputy chairman of the Senate is to be done through a resolution and not a no-confidence motion. “Please stand corrected that in terms of clause (7) of Article 53 read with Article 61 of the Constitution, the Chairman or the Deputy Chairman Senate is to be removed from office by a Resolution and there is no such jargon or concept of ‘motion of no confidence’,” read the letter. “I am ready to face the resolution,” he went on to declare.

“I am fighting for the cause of upholding the majesty and supremacy of the Parliament and specially the prestige of the Chair of the custodian of the House and binding force of his Rulings, irrespective of personalities and individuals,” he said. “I am ready to face the resolution, which I will Insha Allah, but we should ensure that our conduct during this entire process does not weaken the sanctity and force of the Ruling of the Chair,” he added.

Meanwhile, a meeting of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and its allies in the Senate has been convened on Sunday to discuss a strategy ahead of the session of the Upper House requisitioned to take up the opposition’s no-trust motion against Sanjrani.

Leader of the House in Senate Shibli Faraz is likely to preside over the meeting, to be attended by senators belonging to the government and its allied parties. Sadiq Sanjrani is also expected to attend the meeting. The government and its allies will work out a strategy on how to rout the opposition’s no-confidence motion against the Senate chairman.

On July 9, the opposition parties had submitted a no-trust motion against the Senate chairman. The motion was submitted by Raja Zafarul Haq, Sherry Rehman, PML-N leader Javed Abbasi and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam’s Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri.

In a tit-for-tat move, senators of the PTI and its allies also moved a no-confidence motion against Senate Deputy Chairman Saleem Mandviwalla, who is from the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).