Golden Jubilee.

The month of March this year carries a unique significance in our democratic, parliamentary and constitutional journey as the Senate, The House of Federation, celebrates an epoch-making milestone commemorating its Golden Jubilee. It is truly a watershed occasion as it affords us with the unique opportunity to reflect, review and ponder our progress so as to recalibrate a more promising and progressive future trajectory, reflecting the aspirations of the people and the federating units that this august House represents.

Looking back, this journey that the Upper House of our federal parliament embarked upon since its advent half a century ago to reverse the wrongs of the past and to empower provinces through effective representation and devolution of powers, was by no means easy.

The challenges were forbidding, carrying an unwieldy and crippling baggage from our chequered past. The political and parliamentary progression of Pakistan in the pre-1973 Constitution period vindicates that parliament as a unitary legislature literally perpetuated the 'tyranny of the majority'.

This anomaly was redressed in the 1973 Constitution which provided for a bicameral legislature with equal representation to the provinces, thus providing an institutional and constitutional mechanism to connect the federation and the constituting units.

The then Law Minister, Mr. Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, who is credited as a principal draftsman of the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan, said in his address to the National Assembly on February, 17, 1973, that:

'Senate is the most important introduction in this Constitution to provide for a truly and genuinely Federal form or Federal Constitution in the country notwithstanding the tremendous disparity in the population of various provinces ranging from 1.5 or 1.6 million in one province to 33 or 34 million people in the largest province'.

I salute the foresight and sagacity of the framers of the Constitution, who very rightly perceived that political diversity and geographical make up of Pakistan merited a system of federal bicameralism, and not a simple bicameral legislature.

Emerging like a phoenix out of the ashes of misadventures like 'One-Unit' in a dangerous bid to perpetuate a strong Centre, all at the cost of fledgling federating units ultimately costing painful dismemberment of our eastern wing in 1971, the Senate has held its own in face of challenges on our democratic, socio-economic, strategic, security, foreign policy...