Ruling Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf's legislators once again scuffled in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly leaving the Speaker Asad Qaiser with no option but to adjourn the proceedings of the House due to which demands of various departments for grants couldn't have been passed.
The Senior Minister for Information Technology, Shahram Khan Tarakai moved a demand for grant of Rs 79 million for his department. However, the cut motion of Babar Saleem not only annoyed Mr Tarakai, but also other ministers including Mohammad Atif Khan, Shah Farman and Mohammad Ali Tarakai. The house witnessed a formal brawl amongst the PTI legislators which prompted the Speaker to adjourn the proceedings of the house till 1:30 pm on Wednesday.
The opposition legislators termed the incident as shameful, saying that members hurled threats inside the House, which was matter of grave concern. Meanwhile, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly passed only three demands for grants worth Rs 1.429 billion for the KP Assembly and departments of Finance, Treasury & Local Fund Audit and Planning & Development, Statistics.
The demand for grant of Rs 168 million was approved for the provincial assembly without any cut motion from any member of the house. Demand for grant for Administration and Establishment could not get passed and deferred for indefinite period. The demand for grant of the Rs 3.05 billion was listed on second number of the list of grant. However, due to the stubborn attitude of the department regarding granting facilities equivalent to the employees of the Civil Secretariat, decision was deferred in that regard.
Bakht Baidar of QWP, who is chairman of the Provincial Assembly Standing Committee on Administration Department, told the House that the department was asked for several time but it adopted stubborn attitude and declined to grant facilities to the employees' secretariat.
He proposed to the House that the approval of the grant should be deferred as long as they grant incentives to the employees of the Assembly Secretariat. The House agreed with the Bakht Baidar's proposal. The performance of the Departments of Finance, Treasury & Local Fund Audit came under fire in the house and several opposition members presented cut motions citing poor performance of the departments.
The Speaker Asad Qaiser put the cut motions to vote and the house rejected them with majority. Meanwhile, the PTI's estranged MPA Qurban Ali termed the annual development programme (ADP) of the provincial government for the year 2016-17 as injustice with the ideology of the party.
Participating in the debate on budget, the estranged MPA said that the electoral commitment of the PTI was to introduce legislation for utilisation of development funds through local governments. But, in violation of these commitments, the development funds of the provincial government were being spent through specific persons, he argued.
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