PESHAWAR: The provincial assembly session which started just in time was adjourned untimely as Provincial Minister for Health and Information Technology Shahram Khan Tarakai and MPA Babar Saleem traded harsh words over the latter’s Rs. 420 cut motion.
The treasury benches on demands for grants seemed divided from the start.
Four demands for grants presented on the floor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly were approved with a majority despite cut motions by a mix of treasury and opposition members. Some of the MPAs withdrew their cut motions others including Qurban Ali, Awami National Party’s parliamentary leader Sardar Hussain Babak, Zarin Gul and Babar Salim left it for the house to decide.
To a Rs.79.82 million demand for grants for Information Technology by the KP minister for health and Information Technology Sharam Khan Tarakai, the dissident PTI MPA Babar Salim presented a Rs.420 cut motion what the former termed as symbolically “mean.” The harsh words had almost led to a scuffle, prompting lawmakers from both the treasury and opposition to intervene and stop the fight from happening.
Both leaders of the treasury benches hurled derogatory and abusive remarks against each other which later the Speaker KP Assembly Asad Qaiser expunged from the house proceedings terming those “non-parliamentary remarks.” Both Shahram Tarakai and Babar Salim come from Swabi district of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and both had been elected to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on the ticket of Awami Jamhori Ittehad (AJI) in 2013 which later merged into PTI.
Babar Saleem joined the dissident group of PTI lawmakers including Yasin Khalil, Jamshed Mohmand, Qurban Ali Khan and Shakeel Ahmad, adviser to the chief minister and had submitted cut motions against demands for grants after developing differences over the allegedly unjust allocation of funds in the budget session for 2016-17.
Lashing out at his own PTI government in KP, the dissident MPA Qurban Ali said the government had set the province back during the three-year rule. He added that the slogan ‘Badal Raha He Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’ was merely a hollow claim.
Speaking on a cut motion on the assembly floor, Qurban Ali said that the current government had betrayed the ideology and manifesto of the PTI. He added that funds, as according to the party’s manifesto, were to be spent through local government representatives but that did not happen.
Qurban Ali said that change and accountability were the two slogans upon which the KP people gave their mandate to the PTI. “Unfortunately, no sign of accountability and change could be seen under the current government,” the dissident MPA lamented. Malik Qasim, the MPA who is also adviser to the minister on prisons, tried to hamper the speech of Qurban Ali and asked the speaker provincial assembly Asad Qaiser to expunge the non-parliamentary language of the dissident MPA.
Members of the opposition, on the other hand, blamed the treasury bench of intentionally creating an atmosphere to pass the budget without any criticism. Refuting the impression that all development funds had been allocated to few particular constituencies, Finance Minister Muzaffar Said told the house that Rs 2.27 billion had also been allocated in the annual development program to Dera Ismail Khan, the hometown of Opposition Leader Maulana Lutfur Rehman. He added it was the third big allocation for a district in the financial year 2016-17.