Daily Times

KARACHI: Members of opposition staged a walkout in Sindh Assembly again on Thursday, after Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) parliamentarian Taimur Talpur admitted that PPP bought votes from a certain member of the legislature.

The Sindh Assembly session was called to hold a discussion on budget. However, chaos erupted in the parliament after a speech made by Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) lawmaker, Nusrat Seher Abbasi criticised the PPP parliamentarians.

Nusrat Seher, in her address, claimed that Anwar Majeed, the Omni Group owner controlled all the sugar mills in Sindh. She further claimed that Majeed was given several favours by the PPP. “Anwar Majeed was granted a contract to supply a thousand trucks to cultivators of Sindh,” said the PML-F lawmaker. “Not one of the trucks was given to farmers and growers,” she alleged, adding that many cultivators became jobless afterwards. She said that the PPP government was not protecting the interests of the agricultural workers.

Nusrat Seher further accused the PPP government of corruption and said that the party chairman, Bilawal Bhutto was not providing employment to the public. “Bilawal’s supporters sent him job applications which went straight to his dustbin,” said Seher.

During her speech, Nusrat Seher was interrupted several times by Sindh Assembly Speaker Agha Siraj who requested the lawmaker to make her speech short and speak only about the budget. Referring to the parliamentarian’s speech as a ‘jalsa’, Speaker Siraj said, “The jalsa (congregation) is over.” However, his requests remained unheeded by the parliamentarian who kept on speaking.

PPP parliamentarian Muhammad Taimur Talpur then said that the PPP had bought votes in the senate elections. He added that the member who had sold votes to his party was sitting in the legislature. The lawmaker then said that his party was not planning on disclosing this piece of information but now he was compelled to. The parliamentarian further lambasted Nusrat Seher and said that her husband was also awarded a job by someone.

On this, deputy speaker Rehana Laghari told the PPP parliamentarian that he was not supposed to make personnel attacks. “This is a budget session,” maintained the deputy speaker, “You should be speaking about the budget only,” said Laghari.

However, after Taimur Talpur’s speech, members of the opposition began protesting and staged a walkout from the assembly. The opposition demanded that Talpur submit a consolidated video to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) about horse-trading in senate elections.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Haleem Adil Sheikh and parliamentarians from the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) said that the PTI and GDA would approach Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) and request him to take notice of Taimur Talpur’s admission regarding horse-trading in senate elections.

Meanwhile, Nusrat Seher Abbasi, in response to Talpur’s speech, said that parents hesitated while deciding whether to send their daughters to school in Talpur’s constituency.

Earlier, before the commencement of the session, PTI lawmaker Haleem Adil Sheikh talked to the media. He said that a child died because he fell in an uncovered manhole and minister for local government, Saeed Ghani was to blame for it. Criticising Ghani, the PTI leader said that the PPP was accusing PTI of cleaning up before the by-elections but the party had done nothing to make Karachi clean. He alleged that instead, contracts were handed over to West district’s administration. He further claimed that all the charity collected in the name of raising funds for hospitals went into the pockets of elected officials. He also urged minister Saeed Ghani to stop passing negative remarks regarding Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

Opposition leader Firdous Shamim Naqvi told the media that he planned on asking PPP to showcase their old budget books. “We have requested CM Murad Ali Shah to give us information regarding fund allocation and liabilities of the province,” he told journalists. “Nowhere in the budget did they mention the property they accumulated through corruption,” said Naqvi.

Published in Daily Times, September 28^th 2018.