The Pakistan government has reconstituted a commission to protect the rights of minorities, including the Hindus, and promote inter-religious harmony in the country, days after a human rights report revealed that they continued to face forced conversions and persecution under the controversial blasphemy laws in 2019.
The Human Right Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), in its annual report, on Thursday said that religious minorities remained unable to enjoy the freedom of religion or belief guaranteed to them under the country's Constitution.
"For the minority Ahmadiyya community in Punjab, this included the desecration of several sites of worship. Both the Hindu and Christian communities in Sindh and Punjab continued to report cases of forced conversion, it said.
The formation of the National Commission for Minorities was announced on Monday by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony.
According to the ministry's notification, the commission will have six official and 12 non-official members.
The number of members in the commission earlier is not clear as it was dormant.
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The commission will formulate a proposal for development of a national policy to promote peace and interfaith harmony in the country.
According to a report in the Dawn newspaper, it will formulate proposals for amending laws/policies which are reported to be discriminatory towards religious minorities, recommend steps to ensure maximum and effective participation by the members of minority communities in all aspects of life, ensure effective participation and association of minority communities with their religious and cultural festivals and celebrations.
The commission will also look into the grievances and representations made by the members of any minority community.
Its terms of reference also include ensuring that worship places of non-Muslim communities are preserved and kept in a functional condition.
Chela Ram Kewlani, ex-president of Pakistan Hindu Council and a leader of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf in the Sindh province, will be the chairman of the new commission.
Besides Kewlani, Hindu members of the reconstituted commission will be Jaipal Chhabria, a social worker in Karachi and Vishno Raja Qavi, a former bureaucrat from Sukkur in Sindh.
Among the three Christian members, Sarah Safda is a former minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Archbishop Sebastian Francis Shaw of Lahore and Albert David, chairman of Pakistan United Christians Movement.
The Sikh members are Saroop Singh, a senior official in the Khyber Pakhtunhwa government, and 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 a minister in the caretaker set-ups in Balochistan and federal cabinets.
Dawood Shah, a social worker, will represent the Kalash community.
Both Muslim members of the commission are clerics from Lahore. They are Maulana Syed Mohammad Abdul Khabir Azad of Badshahi Masjid, and Mufti Gulzar Ahmed Naeemi.
The six official members include one representative each from the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Law and Justice, Ministry of Human Rights, Federal Education and Professional Training. The chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) and secretary of the Ministry of Religious Affairs will also be the official members of the commission.