Senate panel to take up privilege motions against ECP

The privilege committee of the Senate would take up privilege motions against the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for registering complaints against parliamentarians whose education degrees are found suspect in its up coming session.
The motions were filed by five senators, saying that Election Commission had referred complaints against 15 MNAs and MPs to District Police Officers (DPOs) for investigations and submission of charge sheets to session judges after their educational degrees were found to be suspect. The privilege motion was filed following the news, carried by print and electronic media, quoting ECP sources as saying that it had referred complaints against 15 MNAs/MPAs to DPOs for investigations and submission of charge-sheets to session judges after their educational degrees were found to be suspect.
In their privilege motions, the senators, Wasim Sajjad, Babar Awan, Ishaq Dar, Afrasiab Khattak and Nilofar Bakhtiar claimed that ECP officials leaked a fictitious report on the veracity of their educational qualifications and degrees. They all contended that misinformation was deliberate and had embarrassed the public representatives.
A strong protest was lodged by the ECP in a strong-worded letter tabled before the Chairman Senate. The commission reacted angrily to the filing of privilege motions in the upper house and warned the senate that such moves would be tantamount to an attempt to pressurise the ECP and stop it from performing its functions in line with the mandate given by the Constitution and the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The ECP also claimed in their written brief that they were not the source of the news in question.