ISLAMABAD: Senate Chairman Nayyar Hussain Bokhari proposed on Tuesday that standing committees of the National Assembly and the upper house should be merged to form joint parliamentary bodies in order to speed up the legislative process and reduce expenses.`I will soon write to the prime minister to seek his support for implementation of the idea,` he said.

Speaking at a function held to mark the completion of the 11th parliamentary year of Senate, Mr Bokhari said parliament was often criticised for snail-paced legislation and the overlapping role of the committees of the two houses was said to be a major factor behind this delay.

According to the procedure, a bill is referred to the standing committee concerned after being laid before one house of parliament. When the bill is cleared by the committee it is passed by one houseand the process is repeated in the other.

He said because of this lengthy process sometimes a legislation got delayed and the government was forced to promulgate an ordinance.

`If a joint parliamentary committee having representation of different political parties do the job, the legislation will be done swiftly and the cost on convening multiple meetings for the purpose will go down,` he said.

He said several countries were following the practice of joint parliamentary committees.

The Senate chairman pointed out that the rulings of his predecessors were notreadily available for reference, but an initiative was being taken for the first time in the country`s parliamentary history to get all previous rulings printed in the form of a booklet.

He said 29 bills, including those of 19 private members, were laid before the Senate and two private member bills were adopted by the house during the current parliamentary year.

The Senate chairman said there was a significant increase in the number of private members` bills which could be attributed to the reinforced support services in the legislative drafting by the Senate secretariat. The secretariat willsoon set up a full-fledged unit called members` legislative research and drafting service.

He said a think tank comprising sitting and former members of the Senate would become functional next month and it would submit its recommendations on key issues to the government.

Mr Bokhari described the setting up of a research databank comprising more than 100 indicators and thousands of subreferences, including data record of the question-hour and working papers of standing committees as a concrete achievement of the Senate administration.