Senate | Pakistan

Former Senate chairman Raza Rabbani has called on the National Assembly (NA) speaker and Senate chairman to appoint opposition leaders in both houses of Parliament, saying that leaving the posts vacant “sidelines dissent”. The posts have been lying vacant since August last year, when then-opposition leaders in the NA and Senate — PTI’s Omar Ayub and Shibli Faraz — were disqualified by the Election Commission of Pakistan following their conviction in cases related to riots on May 9, 2023. The PTI has nominated Pakhtun­khwa Milli Awami Party chief Mahmood Khan Achakzai as the opposition leader for the NA and Majlis Wahdat-i-Musl­imeen’s Allama Raja Nasir Abbas for the Senate slot, but their notification remains pending. Rabbani pointed out in a statement on Monday that “Parliament is incomplete”, adding that “this exposes a contradiction in our democracy”. “We talk of the supremacy of Parliament, yet less inclined to uphold this principle,” he added. Saying that the “political system is already strained by pola...

ISLAMABAD: In a move billed by its sponsors as reaffirming parliament’s supremacy, a process has been initiated to amend a Senate rule to limit the scope for high courts to intervene in parliamentary affairs. Amid opposition from the Ministry of Parl­ia­mentary Affairs, the Senate Standing Committee on Rules of Procedure and Privileges has approved an amendment to Rule 166(5) of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Senate. Backers say the change will leave no legal room for the judiciary to interfere in parliamentary matters by relying on the rule in its present form. The proposed amendment, spearheaded by former deputy chairman Saleem Mandviwalla and signed by around three dozen lawmakers, expands the definition of public petitions that can be taken up by Senate committees. It states that a public petition, submitted by a citizen or a group of citizens in the prescribed form under Rule 277, may be presented on “any matter of public importance”, including grievances arising from disputes wher...

PPP leader Sherry Rehman has said that Minister for Communications Abdul Aleem Khan must apologise following his heated exchange with Senator Palwasha Khan during a Senate panel meeting on Friday. Pal­washa, who is also a PPP leader, and the federal minister had traded sharp remarks on Friday over the construction of a road allegedly benefiting a private housing society during a meeting of the Senate Stan­ding Committee on Com­mu­ni­cations. View this post on Instagram In a post on the social media platform X late on Friday night, Rehman said, “What happened today in a Senate standing committee can neither become normalised nor considered acceptable. No federal minister should speak the way Aleem Khan did with Senator Palwasha in a communications committee meeting.” Rehman further said that it was Senator Palwasha’s “absolute responsibility and right to ask questions” and to hold the government accountable. “He must apologise. I am not even going to say that it is necessary because she is a woman. She is due ...

Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Monday congratulated Abid Sher Ali on his unopposed election to the Senate, extending best wishes for his future responsibilities.

The Election Commission of Punjab has released the final schedule for the by-election to fill the Senate seat left vacant after the death of Senator Irfan-ul-Haq Siddiqui.

ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has said the IMF’s Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment (GCDA) report was a step towards much-needed institutional reforms, adding that the government had itself initiated and facilitated the process. Winding up the debate on a motion moved by JUI-F’s Kamran Murtaza in the Senate on Monday, the finance minister said the report covered seven areas, including judicial oversight and corruption, and identifies structural deficiencies — which he termed a positive development. He said it provided 15 recommendations for institutional reforms. He assured the Senate that work on these recommendations was underway, citing the recent law passed by parliament requiring public servants to declare their assets. “We will share our action plan on institutional reforms with the public and parliament,” he said, adding that such diagnostic reports had been released for many countries and represented best practices to assess governance in other jurisdictions. He dismissed...

• Imran’s allies demand immediate access for family, doctors and lawyers • Warn of dire consequences amid unease among public • Minister accuses Afghan, Indian media of circulating ‘false’ reports about PTI leader ISLAMABAD: Amid a noisy protest in the Senate for a second day by PTI senators, the government on Friday assured the House that former prime minister Imran Khan was in good health with no threat to his life and blamed Afghan and Indian media for circulating “false” reports about Mr Khan’s health. The ruckus by PTI lawmakers, alarmed by social media reports about Mr Khan’s condition, dominated the day’s proceedings. They chanted slogans and hit their desks, demanding that family members, doctors and lawyers be allowed to meet with Mr Khan after what they called a “complete blackout for weeks”. Syed Ali Zafar, the PTI parliamentary leader in the Senate, sought an explanation from the government about the reports. “The tension level of the public has risen so high that there will be an explosion if the...

Additional Interior Secretary Salman Chaudhry said on Thursday that the United Arab Emirates had not been issuing visas to Pakistanis. Pakistan and the UAE share close diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties. The UAE is one of Pakistan’s largest trading partners in the Middle East and a major source of remittances, with a large Pakistani expatriate population living and working there. The secretary made this revelation during a meeting of the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights, further stating that Saudi Arabia and the UAE had “stopped short of imposing a ban on the Pakistani passport”. “If a ban is imposed, getting it removed would be difficult,” he warned. The official said that currently, the UAE was only issuing visas to blue and diplomatic passport holders. Separately, Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri, who heads the Senate committee on human rights, also confirmed that the interior ministry official’s remarks to Dawn. She said the bar was attributed to concerns about people travelling to the UAE and ...

Senate body vows support for sports revival

The Senate swiftly passed four bills related to the recently approved contentious 27th Constitutional Amendment on Friday, including one that seeks changes to the Army Act and resets the tenure of Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) Field Marshal Asim Munir after his appointment as the chief of the defence forces (CDF). As explained by Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar in the National Assembly (NA) yesterday, this means that the five-year tenure of the chief of the defence forces would commence from the date of his notification of the appointment. The four bills were passed by the Senate today — a day after their hurried passage in the National Assembly — without debate and with little resistance from the opposition. Apart from the Pakistan Army Amendment Bill 2025, the bills also included the Pakistan Air Force Amendment Bill 2025, the Pakistan Navy Amendment Bill 2025, and the Supreme Court Practice and Procedure Amendment Bill 2025. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar tabled the Pakistan Army Amen...

The Army Act Amendment Bill will be presented before the Senate today (Friday) for formal approval as part of a major legislative agenda set for the session.

ISLAMABAD - Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi on Thursday informed the Senate that Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Field Marshal Asim Munir played a role in pursuing Sri Lanka that its cricket team should not quit its ongoing cricket tour to Pakistan in the wake of the terrorist attack in Islamabad.

The new text of the 27th Constitutional Amendment will be presented in the Senate today for approval, with the session scheduled to begin at 11 a.

The contentious bill for the 27th Constitutional Amendment sailed through the Senate on Monday after 64 lawmakers voted in its favour, with members of the opposition staging a noisy walkout. The government and its coalition partners secured a two-thirds majority in the vote following the defection of two opposition members, leading to a total of 64 votes for the bill. The bill, which had stirred controversy in the country for weeks, was presented in the Senate by Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar, while Senate Chairman Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani presided over the proceedings. Initially, a clause-by-clause voting was carried out. Later, voting by division was conducted, with the entry and exit gates of the Senate closed as per the protocol. View this post on Instagram Before the passage of the bill, opposition benches erupted in protest, chanting slogans against the government and its coalition partners. Lawmakers tore up copies of the bill and hurled them toward Tarar’s table as he began to present it. Most opposit...

Federal Minister for Law Azam Nazeer Tarar will table the 27th Constitutional Amendment Bill in the Senate today (Monday) as the upper house session convenes at 11:00 a.

The US Senate on Sunday moved forward on a measure aimed at reopening the federal government and ending a now 40-day shutdown that has sidelined federal workers, delayed food aid and snarled air travel. In a procedural vote, senators advanced a House-passed bill that will be amended to fund the government until January 30 and include a package of three full-year appropriations bills. If the Senate eventually passes the amended measure, it still must be approved by the House of Representatives and sent to President Donald Trump for his signature, a process that could take several days. Under a deal struck with a handful of Democrats who rebuffed their party’s leadership, Republicans agreed to a vote in December on extending subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. The subsidies, which help lower-income Americans pay for private health insurance and are due to expire at the end of the year, have been a Democratic priority during the funding battle. The vote to advance the bill passed by a 60-40 margin, the mini...

PTI Senator Ali Zafar detailed during a Senate session on Sunday five points that he said constituted the fundamental spirit of the 1973 Constitution and warned that altering the “balance of these five pillars” could lead to “major chaos”. The session was convened today — on a Sunday in a rare move — with a one-point agenda to deliberate on the bill for the 27th Constitutional Amendment. The 26-page Constitution (Twenty-Seventh Amendment) Act, 2025 was tabled in the Senate yesterday amid the opposition’s outcry over the pace and scope of the proposed changes, just hours after its approval by the federal cabinet. Senate Chairperson Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani presided over the session today, which began with the House remembering Allama Iqbal on his birth anniversary. Later, the house also passed a resolution in relevance to Iqbal Day. During the session, PTI lawmakers had pictures of their party founder Imran Khan placed on their desks. At the beginning of the proceedings, a PTI leader raised an objection, to whi...

The agenda for the upcoming session of the Senate has been released, with the upper house scheduled to meet tomorrow, Monday, at 11:30 am.

Shortly after getting approval from the federal cabinet, the bill for the 27th Constitutional Amendment was tabled before the Senate on Saturday and subsequently referred to the standing committees on law and justice. A joint session of both the NA and Senate standing committees on law and justice was then summoned to discuss the amendment. However, during the session of the standing committees, two Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) members, Aliya Kamran and Senator Kamran Murtaza, boycotted the meeting and said the proposed draft included amendments that were discarded in the 26th Amendment bill. Following deliberations on the proposed amendment, the law committees of both Houses adjourned the moot till Sunday. ‘Discussions will continue till consensus is reached’ Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar, speaking to the media after the adjournment of the committees, said all parties were participating in the session and they had also “requested the opposition to participate”. “Aliya Kamran had informed us that they h...

The government is set to table the 27th Constitutional Amendment Bill in the Senate on Friday, where it will be immediately referred to the Senate Committee for review, sources confirmed.