Interior Minister Rehman Malik is one of the three convicts, who were granted pardon by President Asif Ali Zardari and General Pervez Musharraf (Retd). This was stated in replies submitted to the Senate. Rehman Malik on Thursday updated the House regarding the number of convicts granted pardon by President Zardari and former President Musharraf.
The Interior Minister told the House he as a former Additional Director General Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and former Assistant Director Muhammad Sajjad Haider were granted pardon by President Zardari. While former President Musharraf pardoned the sentences of Kashmir Singh s/o Sansar Singh, an Indian national, on February 28, 2008 and Mirza Tahir Hussain s/o Mirza Fazal Hussain, a British national, on March 8, 2006.
According to the replies received from the Interior Ministry, no convict from the four provinces and Gilgit-Baltistan was granted pardon by President Zardari. However, Malik said that special remission by head of the state was granted to convicted prisoners on different occasions.
Meanwhile, Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar informed the upper House that the Record of Discussion (RoD) signed by MD Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and CEO of Turkish Airlines on December 29, 2010, did not have any legal validity. He further said that the question to transport PIA passengers through Turkish Airlines does not arise. Moreover, he added that it had also been formally announced by him on the electronic media that there was no agreement and that any proposal received from the aviation authorities of Turkey to the ministry will be examined thereafter. As of today none has been received, he added.
Minister for States and Frontier Regions (Safron), Shaukat Ullah informed the Senate that at present, the country has 1.611 million registered Afghan refuges and of these 44 percent are residing in 42 camps whereas the remaining 56 percent are living outside the camps. To another question, the Minister for Safron said that the Fata Secretariat has submitted 20 priority projects for Fata costing Rs 93,243 million to the Federal Government for inclusion in the Federal PSDP 2010-11. However, he added that only seven projects have been included in the Federal PSDP 2010-11, costing Rs 42,589 million.
He further informed that a total amount of Rs 493.867 million has been allocated during the current financial year in the Federal PSDP 2010-11 for the said projects, however, these are still un-approved as the Planning Commission has advised not to initiate work on the new projects due to tight budgetary position. He further said that no releases have been issued by the Federal Government so far.
Minister for Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, while responding to supplementary questions in the House, said that new media policy were being formulated and efforts were underway to give it a legal cover before June this year. She said that the new policy would help ensure the supremacy of national interests by media and further improve image of the country across the world.
She said that it has been decided that members of both the parliamentary committees on information and broadcasting, representative of media, civil society and all stakeholders would be taken on board for their inputs in the new policy. She said the government would have to engage private channels into partnership to ensure media access to required information.
Replying to another question, she said that the private channels were not following code of conducts absolutely. She said that under the PEMRA rules no television channel could exceed advertisements above 12 minute per hour, but the code was being violated by electronic media.
She further said that every TV channel was bound to submit five per cent of their gross income into national exchequer, but no payment was being made despite the fact that they were collecting this money from their clients. She said that the non-payment of the money was resulting in lose of billions of rupees to the national exchequer.
The Minister said that PEMRA was not playing an effective role of a regulator as it has been put under the purview of the ministry adding that we have to make it (PEMRA) an autonomous body so that it could take action against any violators without creating a perception that the government was behind it.
About the show cause notices to the private TV channels, she said that that PEMRA issued show-cause notices to TV channels for violating rules, but they secured stay order from the courts. She further said that cases were pending before the courts for the past three years.
About complaints received, the Minister said that PEMRA received as many as 2,495 complaints from across the country and 135 show-cause notices were issued to the private TV channels. She said that as per PEMRA rules and license terms and conditions, 90 percent of the contents must be indigenous and the remaining 10 per cent provision was available to all TV channels for foreign content. She further said that PEMRA has issued licenses to 85 Pakistani satellite TV channels, out of which 47 are entertainment channels.
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