Wednesday, Mar 23, 2005
Wednesday, Mar 23, 2005 |
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By B. Muralidhar Reddy
ISLAMABAD, MARCH 22. Yielding to pressure from rightwing elements, Pakistan today decided to restore religion column in the passports with the words "Islamic Republic of Pakistan' on the cover. Pakistan did away with the column and started issuing Machine Readable Passports (MRPs) since January, in line with the efforts of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to introduce global standards for travel documents. The format has been adopted by several countries. The column was introduced in the passports in 1980 by the government of the military ruler, Zia ul-Haq. The six-party religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), has launched an agitation seeking restoration of the column. "We feel that the omission of the religion column is an attack on our very identity as Muslims," the MMA leaders have been telling their supporters at the so- called "million-man marches" being organised throughout the country. It announced that it would organise a strike on April 2 in protest against among other things changes in the passport format. The alliance argues that the omission of the column would allow Qadianis, a minority sect declared to be non-Muslims in the constitution in 1974, to travel to Mecca for pilgrimage. However, there are no takers for the argument within and outside the country. The Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz, constituted a five-member ministerial committee to look into the pros and cons of the column. In its unanimous recommendation, the committee has recommended that the religion may be stamped at a suitable place. The Information and Broadcasting Minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who announced the ministerial committee recommendations at a news conference here denied that column was being restored under pressure from the religious parties. He said the decision to do away with the column was taken by the Mir Zafarullah Khan government due to a "clerical mistake" and it was being rectified on "popular demand."
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