ISLAMABAD: National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser has cancelled the meeting of Parliamentary Committee on National Security due to boycott of opposition member, which was scheduled for Friday at 4:30pm. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb has confirmed the boycott of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security.

The parliamentary committee was supposed to discuss the matters related to Gilgit-Baltistan. Leaders of all the parliamentary parties in the National Assembly and the Senate had been invited to attend the meeting. Federal Ministers for Defence, Interior, Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan, Adviser to the PM on Parliamentary Affairs, Attorney General and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs for Pakistan had been invited as special invitees.

The NA speaker had also invited the governor and caretaker CM of Gilgit-Baltistan as special invitees. He had also invited MNAs Khawaja Muhammad Asif and Raja Pervaiz Ashraf to attend the meeting. According to the sources, the opposition has decided not to attend the meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security due to the behaviour of the speaker in the joint sitting of the Parliament on Wednesday.

They said the opposition believed that the speaker played partial role in the joint sitting. Sources said the opposition also had reservations about the caretaker government elections, and election preparations in Gilgit-Baltistan, due to which, the opposition had decided to boycott the meeting.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020