Govt notifies reconstituted commission for minorities.

Byline: Kalbe Ali

ISLAMABAD -- The MinAisAtry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony on MonAday notified the reconstituted National CommAission for Minorities and its terms of reference which include ensuring that worship places of non-Muslim communities are preserved and kept in a functional condition.

Belonging to a business family from Jamshoro, Chela Ram Kewlani, ex-president of Pakistan Hindu Council and a leader of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf in Sindh, has been notified as chairman of the new commission.

According to the ministry's notification, the commission will have six official and 12 non-official members including the chairman for a term of three years.

Among these 12 members of the commission for minorities, two are Muslim, three belong to the Hindu and Christian communities each, two members of Sikh community. The Parsi and Kalash communities of the country will be represented by one member each in the commission.

Besides Mr Kewlani, Hindu members of the reconstituted commission will be Dr Jaipal Chhabria, a social worker in Karachi, and Vishno Raja Qavi, a former bureaucrat from Sukkur.

Among the three Christian members, Prof Dr Sarah Safda is a former minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while the two others belong to the clergy. They are Archbishop Sebastian Francis Shaw, belonging to Archdiocese, Lahore, Catholic Church, and Albert David, chairman of a political party, Pakistan United Christians Movement, who received one of the highest public service awards of the UK, MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of The British Empire).

The two Sikh members in the commission are Saroop Singh, a senior official in the Khyber Pakhtunhwa government, and Dr Mimpal Singh from Lahore's King Edward Medical University.

The member belonging to the Parsi (Zoroastrian) community in the commission is ex-senator Roshan Khurshed Bharucha. She belongs to Quetta and had been minister in the caretaker set-ups in Balochistan...

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