ISLAMABAD - The joint Opposition on Wednes­day moved a requisition to sum­mon the Senate for taking up the privilege motion moved by Deputy Chairman Senate Salim Mandvi­walla against the Chairman Nation­al Accountability Bureau (NAB) Justice (Retd) Javed Iqbal. 

The requisition signed by more than one fourth members of the Opposition in the house has asked Chairman Senate Muhammad Sadiq Sanjrani to summon fresh session of the House as requited under Article 54 (3) and Article 61 of the Constitution. 

The requisition has been sum­moned with the Senate Secretariat. 

The agenda of requisition includes that the house may discuss the privi­lege motion moved by Deputy Chair­man Senate against Chairman NAB, Director General NAB, Investigation Officer of the bureau, and registrar and deputy registrar of Company Registration Officer in SECP Lahore. 

Besides this, it includes discussion, consideration and adoption of a reso­lution against human rights violation by NAB. It says that the House should discuss, consider and adopt “a reso­lution for verification of degrees, do­micile certificates and asset declara­tion of NAB authorities/officials.” 

The agenda stated that “the govern­ment’s unprecedented crackdown on Opposition workers and their Con­stitutional right to protest peacefully must be protested in the House.” Dis­proportionate responses such as ar­rest warrants of political activists by the government in such institutions can lead to dangerous volition of fundamental rights but it seems the government is least concerned with domestic norms or obligations, says the requisition. 

The joint Opposition also ques­tioned the massive scale of pre-poll, polling day rigging and result-tam­pering fraud in the recent election of Gilgit-Baltistan, it also stated.

Last month, Senate Deputy Chair­man Saleem Mandviwalla had moved a motion of breach of privilege in the Senate against NAB Chairman and two other officers of the anti-corrup­tion watchdog for “maliciously and wrongfully” accusing him in an “un­related investigation.” 

Besides chairman NAB, Senator Mandviwalla had named Director General NAB Rawalpindi Irfan Naeem Mangi and the officer in-charge of the NAB’s case what he said “fallacious case” initiated against him. 

In the motion submitted with the Senate Secretariat, he had urged the house to call for the evidence and the legal basis for allegedly malign­ing and scandalizing him. He also requested that the motion, available with The Nation, should be held ad­missible and the matter should be re­ferred to the Sanding Committee on Rules of Procedure and Privileges. 

Before this, NAB in its report submitted to an Accountability Court in Islamabad had said that it had frozen assets of Senator Mand­viwalla in connection with the fake accounts scandal. 

The bureau informed the court that it had frozen 3.1 million shares of dif­ferent companies registered in the name of opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Senator with the Secu­rities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).