ISLAMABAD - The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, which was all set to get legislation for granting extension to military courts, has to suffer a setback when PPP, the main opposition party in the Parliament, came up with certain proposals for the extension mechanism of these courts established under a sunset clause in early January 2015 for a period of two years.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Monday informed media persons that in the face of fresh proposals from PPP, they have deferred the planned legislation on the subject to have further consultation on it with all political stakeholders.

Earlier, the huddle of parliamentary parties sans PPP rushed to evolve consensus on granting extension of two years to these courts with the same powers granted to them under the 21st Constitutional Amendment, only to make the all parties conference called by PPP on the issue a couple of days later.

But the PPP went ahead with its planned APC to deliberate upon the military courts, though a couple of opposition parties — PTI and MQM - refused to attend the moot on the pretext that the same became irrelevant as the parliamentary parties huddle had already evolved consensus on the issue to grant another extension of two years to these courts.

But with the fresh proposals of scaling down the extension period from two years to one year and demanding right to appeal and production of accused before the court within 24 hours after their arrest under these special laws forced the government to restart the consultation process.

Political analysts said that government had tried to make PPP irrelevant on the issue and moved ahead to finalise the extension with rest of the parliamentary parties but the smart move on part of the PPP leadership had forced the government to retreat and take it along on this issue.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in a press talk said that there was no intention on part of the government to unilaterally deal with this issue and said that the deferment on the military courts extension was actually made to include the PPP set of proposals and to have reflection of other stakeholders on it.

He further said that in a next couple of days they would be calling the huddle of the parliamentary parties to discuss the matter and to take up the proposals of PPP.

Sources aware of the contact made between the government and PPP leadership informed that after taking the decision of granting extension to the military courts, without waiting for the outcome of the PPP called all parties conference, when Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had approached Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Shah the latter had expressed his annoyance over the move and had taken it as sidelining of the main opposite party on this very important issue.

The PPP leader had made it clear to the ruling PML-N leadership that in such a situation where PPP would be politically marginalised they would not let the things smoothly and would oppose the government piece of legislation tooth and nail and would bring parallel piece of legislation on the subject.

Sense prevailed in the government ranks and it was decided to defer the legislation on the matter to accommodate the PPP point of view on this very sensitive issue to have consensus view on it.

Without the support of the PPP, the government would not be in a position to get the fresh amendment passed from the Upper House of the Parliament and ultimately they have to take the matter to Joint Sitting of the Parliament in case PPP would not extend support to any piece of legislation, so it is more of the compulsion than just having the consensus on this vital piece of legislation which government wanted to pass at the earliest, a senior Parliamentarian commented.