Zubair Qureshi
On the conclusion of the second year of the PTI government on Aug 17, 2020 a significant decline is reported in meetings of the National Security Committee (NSC).
This was revealed in a report of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development & Transparency (PILDAT) shared with the media on Monday.
During the second year in office, Prime Minister Imran Khan has convened and chaired just one meeting of the NSC, which is a sharp decline of 83% in contrast to his first year in office when he had convened and chaired six meetings of the NSC.
Besides, during the second year in office, PM Imran Khan has convened 46 meetings of the Federal Cabinet compared to his first year in office when he chaired 52 meetings of the Federal Cabinet.
Rule 20 of the Government of Pakistan Rules of Business calls for a weekly cabinet meeting which translates into about 52 meetings per year, said the report further however, adding that at the moment, Rules of Business of the NSC do not specify how regularly NSC should meet.
It is important that rules are framed that define at least a monthly periodicity of the NSC meetings, if not weekly, it further says.
Even though the Prime Minister convened only one meeting of the NSC during the year, he held five 5 one-on-one meetings with the Chief of Army Staff and 20 other interactions in which Chief of Army Staff was present, the reports says adding, the Minister of Defence was part of 3 or 12% of these 25 interactions.
During his first year in office, when Prime Minister Khan convened 6 NSC meetings, he had met and interacted with Chief of Army Staff a total of 41 times and Federal Minister for Defence was present in 13 (32%) of the 41 meetings held between Prime Minister and Army Chief.
