Daily Times

The opposition has showed sheer dissatisfaction over the in-camera briefing given by the government in Punjab Assembly to lawmakers on Thursday over the report of Joint Investigation Team in Sahiwal incident and once again demanded the formation of Judicial Commission to probe the sad incident. As per the details, it was the first ever in-camera session of the Punjab Assembly on Thursday in which Additional Chief Secretary Punjab Fazeel Asghar gave a detailed briefing to MPAs over the Sahiwal incident and findings of the JIT report. The media wasn’t allowed to sit in the Press Gallery due to the in-camera sitting while the doors of the assembly chamber were also closed once the lawmakers entered the House and they were not allowed to leave the house during the briefing.

The insiders told this scribe that the law minister first moved a motion in the House regarding the briefing of the ACS (Home) followed by the tough questions from the lawmakers of opposition benches. PML-N’s Azma Zahid Bokhari, Irfan Doltana, Malik Arshad, Tahir Khalil Sandhu, Malik Nadeem Kamran, Samiullah Khan and opposition leader Hamza Shehbaz spoke in the House and asked tough questions from the ACS.

“I take care of the parliamentary norms and will not disclose the information related to the briefing because it was in-camera session. But I’ll suffice only to say after today’s briefing that judicial commission must be constituted immediately because we are not satisfied over the briefing given today,” said leader of the opposition Hamza Shehbaz while talking to reporters outside the Assembly. He further added that the day of in-camera briefing coincided with the day of meeting PML-N supreme leader Nawaz Sharif in jail but his emotions and gravity of Sahiwal incident forced him to attend the in-camera sitting instead of visiting elder Sharif in jail. “Nawaz Sharif isn’t feeling well and it was very difficult decision for me to attend the in-camera sitting today instead of visiting him because the Sahiwal tragedy is just about humanity,” said Hamza. He once again demanded public execution for the culprits of Sahiwal incident and said that only the judicial commission can bring the real story in front of the nation while terming the JIT ‘wastage of time’. Opposition leader also lashed out at Chief Minister Usman Buzdar for not attending the in-camera sitting over one of the most important issues during his government. The seriousness of the government can be gauged by the fact that leader of the house skipped today’s most important in-camera briefing.

It is worth mentioning here that CM didn’t utter even a single word over the issue in the House so far and he went to Islamabad to have a meeting with PM instead of taking the House in confidence on Thursday as well.

The parliamentary leader of PPP Syed Hassan Murtaza also rejected the briefing and his party also boycotted the in-camera sitting. “I wanted to speak something over the JIT report but the Chair didn’t give me the floor and therefore we boycotted the sitting in protest,” he said. He was of the view that today’s in-camera sitting was presenting a classroom like scene where the students don’t ask questions due to the fear of a strict headmaster. He further added that Punjab, that is more than 60 percent of the country has been handed over to an incompetent CM who couldn’t speak even a single word over the tragic incident of Sahiwal in the House and once again skipped the most important in-camera briefing today. He also demanded an FIR against the CM over Sahiwal incident while also demanding a judicial commission to probe the tragedy.

The session was later adjourned by the Deputy Speaker for Friday morning.

Published in Daily Times, January 25^th 2019.