Thursday, the Senate Standing Committee on Interior passed a bill to get rid of Section 124-A of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), which is also known as the “Sedition Law.”
While PTI Senator Mohsin Aziz was in charge of the group meeting, the bill was being talked about.
Section 124-A of the PPC says, “Anyone who, by spoken or written words, signs, visible representations, or any other means, provokes or tries to provoke hatred or contempt against the federal or provincial government established by law shall be punished with life in prison, with a fine that may be added, or with three years in prison, with a fine that may be added, or with a fine.”
In March of this year, Justice Shahid Karim of the Lahore High Court threw out Section 124-A of the PPC because it was not in line with the Constitution. The people who sent the appeal said that Articles 8, 9, 14, 16, 17, 19 and 19-A of the Constitution were broken by Section 124-A of the PPC.
The Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2023, which was brought up by PTI Senator Fawzia Arshad, was passed by the Senate committee as a whole.
Sen. Mian Raza Rabbani of the PPP said that the bill was “lost” in the office. He said that the bill’s goal was to change the way government works, which is called “neodemographic.”
In his speech, the PPP senator said that Section 124-A was unnecessary in the PPC because it was made in the neo-demographic age. He also said that the idea of revolt did not exist in the present day.
He also said that Section 124-A was ruled illegal by a single-member bench of the LHC. The temporary law and justice ministry said that the government had appealed the decision and that the bill should be put on hold until the court made a decision.
Senator Rabbani, on the other hand, said that judicial processes could not stop what was going on in parliament.
Another bill that the committee looked at was the Societies Registration (Amendment) Bill, 2023. This bill dealt with registering both new and old madrassas.
JUI-P One of the people who brought forward the bill, Senator Molvi Faiz Muhammad, said that madrassas should be listed not only in Islamabad but also in every district of the country.
He was told by people from the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Administration that the Charities Act already had a process in place for madrasas to be registered.
The member for the JUI-P spoke in Arabic and didn’t like it when the ICT Administration officials spoke English. He said that an event with faith groups would be better if they were invited.
The head of the committee said that the bill didn’t need to be brought up again at the meeting.
People from far away shouldn’t have to go to Islamabad to register madrasas, said the home secretary, which was the main goal of the bill. He also said that since the local Charities Act was already in place, no one had to go to the federal capital to do this.
In the end, the committee turned down the bill. member Abdul Qadir joked that the chairman had made the JUI-P member very angry.
The Cutting of Trees (Prohibition) (Amendment) Bill, 2023, which was put forward by PPP Senator Palwasha Mohammed Zai Khan, was also looked at. The bill was put on hold until the next committee meeting, when it will be brought up again.
