KARACHI: A total of 90 MPAs attended the parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday, Pir Mazhar, nominated parliamentary group leader of the PPP in the Sindh Assembly, said at a press conference.

Briefing reporters after the group meeting at Khuhro House, he said that the Constitution’s article 109 vests power in the governor to summon the session.

“Today’s meeting reiterated its demand that either the governor or caretaker chief minister should seek a date for the session and then the governor must summon the session at the earliest,” he said. The order of revocation of proclamation of emergency has allowed the President to specify the date for provincial assemblies’ session too, he said. Answering a question, he said that it was tantamount to humiliation to democracy that the MPAs-elect have not been invited so far to take oath.

He said the parliamentary group meeting has formed a committee that comprises of him (Pir Mazhar), Ayaz Soomro and Rafiq Engineer. That committee will propose the means to withdraw false cases framed against PPP’s officials, members, supporters, electoral contestants and their polling agents for the pos-Dec.27 violence across Sindh province.

He said that 90 MPAs had attended Tuesday meeting at Nisar Khuhro’s house. Out of them, two belonged to Awami National Party (ANP).

Two PPP’s MPAs namely Mohsin Shah (T M Khan) and Mehboob Bijarani (Jacobabad) had informed the party about the reasons that made them not to attend. Mohsin Shah was ill and a close relative of Bijarani was also critically ill. Shahi Syed, provincial president of the ANP, also attended the meeting.

Pir Mazhar said that speculations about the split, differences and forward bloc in the PPP should be considered dead after Tuesday’s show of strength at Khuhro House.

They formally reiterated their pledge that PPP Sindh’s parliamentary group has complete trust in the leadership of Asif Zardari and they will abide by and fully support what he decides on any matter. He ruled out his differences with Manzoor Wassan saying that he was like a brother and both of them had spent two years together in a jail for the party.

Summary not read: The Sindh secretary to the chief minister has not read the summary that has been moved by the law department over summoning of the provincial assembly’s session. An MPA-elect told Daily Times that he had talked to the secretary to the (caretaker) chief minister, who admitted that he had not read the contents of the summary.

On the other hand, PPP’s parliamentary group has asked the Sindh governor to acquire a specific date from President Pervez Musharraf for the earliest session of the assembly.

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