ISLAMABAD: The Senate passed three legislation on Monday, including the Guardians and Wards (Amendment) Bill 2020, which gives mothers the right to custody of youngsters if their parents divorce. Senator Farooq H Naek introduced the Guardians and Wards (Amendment) Bill, 2020, to alter the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890, claiming that while superior courts had already extended the right of custody to mothers, it was not in the statutory form.
Ali Muhammad Khan, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, advised that the House adopt the Council of Islamic Ideology’s (CII) recommendations into the proposed amendment to make it more effective. He believed that because the CII included Ulema from various schools of thought, their views should be taken into account to ensure that the legislation was implemented smoothly.
Following the bill’s passing in the Senate, the mover stated that it will be sent to the National Assembly for further review, and that the government should offer revisions to improve the legislation. The proposal, according to Naek, would give divorced/widow moms custody of their male and female children until they are seven and sixteen years old, respectively.
A “mother” would be eligible to be appointed as a guardian of the kid under the bill if the father is either deceased or deemed unfit to care for the child by the court. Senate Deputy Chairman Mirza Muhammad Afridi gave a clause-by-clause reading of the bill, which received a majority vote.
Senator Shahadat Awan’s Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill, 2021, was also passed by the House. Because “due to a lack of time, apprehension of narcotics being removed or the perpetrator having an opportunity to flee may occur,” the amendment would allow an assistant sub-inspector or equivalent on duty to enter, search, seize, and arrest someone in a public location.
The House also overwhelmingly passed Senator Shahadat Awan’s Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill-2021, which aimed to separate the judiciary from the executive by replacing special judicial magistrates with judicial magistrates designated for the trial of petty offences in summary tribunals.
According to the bill’s statements of objects and reasons, special judicial magistrates, as representatives of the executive, are empowered to exercise judicial functions and conduct summary trials of minor offences that are in violation of the contours of separation of judiciary and executive as safeguarded in the Pakistani Constitution.
