Treasury benches again faced defeat on Monday because of non-seriousness of its legislators towards official business of the Punjab Assembly (PA) compelling Speaker Rana Iqbal to adjourn the session until today (Tuesday) at 10am. It was the fifth time during the six-day proceedings of the PA’s 32nd session when the session was adjourned owing to lack of quorum and treasury benches’ failure to show the required majority to run the house business. On Friday, the session started 52 minutes late from its scheduled time at 3pm, which was also pointed out by the opposition on a point of order and blamed the government for delay in the session due to its non-seriousness towards assembly matters.
Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah requested the House to offer prayers for the departed soul of father of treasury member Iftikhar Baloch. Later, Punjab Opposition Leader Raja Riaz, on a point of order, informed the House that President Asif Ali Zardari had returned to Pakistan from Dubai and his health was better now.
He said that after return of the president, political pundits had been embarrassed and were ready to sit on another tree, as Zardari had foiled all their speculations and calculations that he had runaway from the country and would never return.
Riaz said Zardari would not leave the country in any case like others, who had left Pakistan with 40 boxes and 40 chefs in the past. Sanaullah said the House had prayers for his health but he was not sure that what kind of illness the president was suffering from and that he (Zardari) needed to be shown the right way. Infuriated opposition members were stopped by the speaker from saying anything in reply. Questions regarding the progress of the Bank of Punjab were asked.
Answering another question by PML-N MPA Mian Naseer, the minister informed that all 159 branches of the bank were operational and providing loans to farmers on lowest mark-up of 18 percent for purchase of tractors and 16 percent for other purposes.
Afterwards, the speaker announced to take call attention notices when a Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) MPA Khadija Umar Farooqi pointed out the quorum. At that time only 70 members of the treasury were present in the House and later around 25 to 30 members of the opposition joined the session and supported the treasury to run the business. The law minister suggested that the opposition should avoid pointing out the quorum repeatedly especially when general public interest matters were being discussed in the House, as it was a good tradition of the PA since its first day.
PPP MPA Athar Gorchani highlighted the issue of death of two school children and injuries of 13 in Rajanpur when they were forced to attend a PML-N function. He said the PML-N had used children of Tatarpur Primary School, who were riding a rickshaw with their teachers, and unfortunately, the rickshaw turned over and two children died on the spot while others were in a critical condition at Nishtar Hospital, Multan. He asked Sanaullah to inform the House that who was responsible for this incident and use of children for political purposes.
After this, the opposition started a protest on the quorum issue and the session was adjourned without debates on availability of fertilizers and problems being faced by sugarcane growers.
