- PPP’s Sharmila Faruqui introduces legislation.
- NA committee describes bill as “impractical”.
- Khurram Nawaz chairs NA committee session.
ISLAMABAD: A standing committee of the National Assembly on Tuesday rejected a bill proposing a ban on dowry, terming it “impractical”.
Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) MNA Sharmila Faruqui moved the bill during a meeting on the NA’s Standing Committee on Interior under the chair of MNA Raja Khurram Nawaz.
The proposed legislation sought to criminalise dowry practices and outlined penalties for violations.
However, it included a clause allowing parents to give voluntary gifts.
The bill failed to sail through as members of the committee “unanimously” declared it “impractical”.
In a post on X, the PPP lawmaker confirmed the same, saying that discussion during the meeting “reflected encouragement rather than restraint of dowry”.
“Dowry is not a culture. It is coercion. The state must stand with women, not normalise a practice that commodifies them. A society that protects dowry chooses patriarchy over dignity,” she wrote in her post.
However, Faruqui vowed to continue her efforts to ban dowry, saying her fight was “far from over”.
In July, the Supreme Court declared the denial of dowry or maintenance to a woman on the grounds of infertility illegal.
The historic ruling by Chief Justice Yahya Afridi delivered a scathing condemnation of the “sorrowful” practice of using infertility, or even the suspicion of it, as a weapon against women in legal proceedings.
The ruling was delivered by Chief Justice Yahya Afridi, who, while heading a two-judge bench, lamented that this “social practice routinely results in courts of law becoming venues for humiliating a woman under the guise of litigation.”
Last year, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) suggested tweaks to the Dowry and Bridal Gift Act proposing an enhanced penalty from six months to up to one-year imprisonment for those found violating the law.
During its 239th meeting in October last year, the CII also recommended increasing the maximum limit of the amount of dowry from Rs5,000 to two tolas of gold along with a hike in expenses of marriage from Rs2,500 to the amount equivalent to the same amount of hold.
