As ever before in the recent past, humiliation continued to haunt the government in the National Assembly on Thursday with some dramatic full-fledged and partial opposition walkouts hindering the proceedings.
The opposition stormed out of the National Assembly thrice on different issues, including one against the Adviser to the Prime Minister on Women Development for not providing satisfactory replies specifically about the Gender Reforms Action Plan (GRAP).
However, Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) lawmakers divided when Naheed Khan along with some other party colleagues walked out of the Lower House for not allowing her to speak.
Speaking on a point of order, Naheed Khan wanted to draw the attention of the chair towards a letter issued by the head of PTV Current Affairs programmes directing the officials not to allow parliamentarians belonging to "forward block" appearing on the state-owned television.
As usual, Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain switched off her mike and said the matter cannot be discussed on a point of order.
Naheed Khan threatened to stage walkout from the House, but not only faced embarrassment from the chair but she even failed to convince her party's top brass who did not join the lady MNA in the walkout.
Although most of the PPPP lawmakers joined hands with Naheed Khan and staged walkout but party Secretary General Raja Pervez Ashraf, chief whip, Khurshid Shah and Aitezaz Ahsan remained in the Lower House.
Earlier, Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) staged a token walkout from the National Assembly against what they termed unsatisfactory answers from the Adviser to the Prime Minister Nilofar Bakhtiar regarding the GRAP programme.
MNA Shakeela Khanam Rashid asked the adviser about details of international conferences relating to women held in Pakistan during 2003-05.
Nilofar, who was praising the contributions of President Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz for women empowerment, failed to satisfy the women members belonging to the religio-political alliance.
Samia Raheel Qazi from the MMA asked Nilofar to place complete document of GRAP before the Parliament for discussion, but the adviser gave unsatisfactory reply.
It was the helpless federal Defence Minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal who failed to defend the government regarding delay in inspection of landing guidance and navigation system at the civil and military airports.
Rao Sikandar had no information about the issue and rushed to find out Minister of State for Defence Zahid Hamid who later on came and responded to the opposition's calling attention notice.
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