Daily Times

LAHORE: Punjab Assembly’s last session of its constitutional five years’ tenure ended in an odd manner as the House experienced manhandling, quarrels, walkouts, abusive talks and rumpus among legislators of treasury and opposition benches several times.

The annoyed opposition also denied joining treasury for a traditional joint group photo of the assembly members scheduled in front of the assembly building after the session and the government’s allied parties only participated in the event. Pertinent to mention that Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif who also did not give much time to the assembly session and just visited twice during the last parliamentary year was also not present on this occasion.

Punjab Assembly’s last day of the last session on Thursday was chaired by Speaker Rana Iqbal that was started three hours late to its scheduled time at 11am and the House passed all the 40 grants of Supplementary Budget of Rs 81 billion extra to the charged expenditures of Rs 4 billion of the Punjab government. While the Provincial Finance Minister Dr Aisha Ghaus Pasha informed the colleagues that per capita income in Punjab as compared to other provinces had been enhanced in her government’s tenure of last five years.

She further told the House that ratio of poverty was just 31 percent in Punjab which is also low as compared to other provinces where the ratio of poverty in Balochistan is 71 percent and 43 percent in Sindh. She also gave some references of independent reports of international organisations and economists to prove her government’s performance better than its portrayed by the opposition.

Earlier, on a point of order, Opposition Leader Mian Mahmoodur Rasheed criticising the government over presenting supplementary budget revealed that Punjab CM Shehbaz Sharif had spent Rs 1 billion on his personal publicity as well as allocated funds of Rs 1.53 billion on the OrangeLine Metro Train Project which is unfair to the taxpaying masses of Punjab. He further said that according to the supplementary budget statement, an extra amount of Rs 60 million was used by the chief minister which is separate from his discretionary funds of Rs 60 million. He confirmed that Rs 1.7 are being spent on CM’s expenditures daily and all bills of his six offices including his Model Town house were being paid on government account.

The Opposition Leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) also announced that Sharif’s government had spent extra funds of Rs 8 billion on development projects in the constituency NA-120 during by-elections so he would knock the door of the election commission over this violation.

When the treasury member Umar Farooq while talking on the supplementary budget used some derogatory words for the PTI leadership and his residence, the situation in the House turned tense and counter verbal attacks began from both sides—treasury and opposition members. PTI’s Arif Abbasi also faced abusive words by minority treasury members. Tariq Masih, Shahzad Munshi, Zulfiqar Ghauri, Shahzadi Kaukab and Farzana Butt on provocation of provincial minister Khawaja Imran Nazir got into a fist fight.

Taking this into account, the Speaker expunged the derogatory words from the proceeding and asked both members to withdraw their statements. But Shahzad Munshi, Tariq Masih and Zulfiqar Ghauri walked out demanding Speaker to suspend Arif Abbasi.

Another fight broke out when PTI’s Shoaib Siddiqui while addressing the house on point of order declared that half of the treasury benches members have already joined his party leaving Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and others are in a bid to join PTI.

Both sides chanted slogans against each other’s leadership.

Published in Daily Times, May 18^th 2018.