LAHORE – Although five-year term of the Punjab Assembly is about to complete, no change has come about in the attitude of legislators as they continued to show hullabaloo, blame-game, sloganeering and throwing indecent remarks in the 45th session on Tuesday.
Called on the requisition of the opposition, the proceedings, as usual, kick-started three-hour late and hardly did anything concrete except making pledge to solve the problem of setting up of Lahore High Court bench in Sargodha.
The House held a two-hour proceeding that was marked by two intervals; first came when the House witnessed such a rumpus that Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal had no help but to suspend the proceedings for half hour, and other when Shaikh Allauddin pointed out to the forum which remained incomplete and the session was prorogue.
The only sane voice came from the Sheikh himself as he tried to awaken the legislators to the millions of rupee expenditure (about Rs 13million) incurring daily on a session on the hope, the members would do anything positive for the poor but they were failing miserably.
The noisy scenes and desire of everyone to speak on the point of order, even during the question hour depicted on some occasions, picture of the fish market with the Chair making full-throated appeals to the members for maintaining order and decorum of the House but hardly any one showing compliance.
On a point of order, treasury member Tahir Khalil Sidhu, took serious objection to the remarks made by Interior Minister Rahman Malik against the Punjab Government on terrorism issue but it only provoked the Opposition to defend its Federal Minister through chanting slogans against the Punjab government. The situation led the treasury to retort and the house witnessed such a commotion that even Maghrib Azaan was not taken care of by the members and chair suspended the proceedings when no side showed retreat. On resumption, the Chair tied to go ahead with Questions sheet but the Opposition diverted attention of the House to the thrashing of PPP leader Shaukat Basra at the hand of police on February 10 when he joined the young doctors protest against the provincial government. PPP’s Hassan Murtaza took the House on a point of order and wanted suspension of the accused SP and constitution of a committee of the House to probe the issue. However, in return, he received a call from the Treasury for registering case against Basra for pretending injuries and in fact having none. Ghazala Rana who was much vocal on the treasury side felt badly offended when Murtaza passed objectionable remarks against her and a pandemonium took over the House as the lady found violation of her privilege and mustered up support of other members and demanded apology of Murtaza who however stood resolute on what he said. As the bitterness on both sides subsided a bit, the PML-Q member Samina Khawar Hayat got flared up when PPP’s Ashraf Sohna recalled shaving of Rana Sana’s mustachios and eye-brow during the Pervez Elahi govt.