LAHORE: PML-N MPA Ramesh Singh Arora said on Saturday that the PTI government failed to make bylaws of the landmark Sikh Marriage Act passed by the Punjab Assembly.

Pakistan is the first country in the world which introduced legislation for the registration of Sikh marriages.

The session started 1 hour and 12 minutes late under the chair of the panel of chair, Mian Shafi Muhammad.

Addressing the budget session, Ramesh Singh said that the government also failed in making bylaws of the Hindu Marriage Act and Christian bylaws.

He also alleged that the government failed to give rights to the minorities.

PML-N MPA Khalil Tahir Sindhu demanded making of the first speech of the Quaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a part of the curriculum.

He said allocation of the development budget was useless if it was not properly utilized.

Three PML-N minority MPAs, Khalil Tahir Sindhu, Ramesh Singh and Tariq Gill, walked out from the House as a protest over what they said the chair not giving them the chance to express their views during the budget session.

Minister for Social Welfare Syed Yawar Abbas Bukhari later brought them back into the House.

Pakistan People’s Party MPA Syed Ali Haider Gillani while participating in the budget debate announced that the PPP would support the PTI government over making South Punjab a province.

Forty million people of South Punjab want a province and not a secretariat, and the PPP would support the creation of the province.

Ali Haider said that the government had deprived people of 165 constituencies of development funds in three years.

Public Accounts Committee (PAC II) chairman and Minister for Social Welfare Syed Yawar Abbas Bukhari said that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government in Punjab presented its fourth budget enhancing development allocations by 66 per cent to Rs560 billion from last year’s Rs337bn as social sector and infrastructure development claim 63 percent of the Annual Development Plan 2021-22.

The government has allocated funds for other parts of Punjab other than Lahore under Punjab Growth Strategy. The government has increased the budget allocation of every department by 65 percent.

The government will upgrade 1,200 schools in one year.

The government wants to establish university in every district of the province.

While participating in the budget debate, PTI legislators Ammar Siddique, Neelam Hayat, Muhammad Nadeem Qureshi and Mazhar Wasif said that the effects of the budget presented by this government would reach the common man.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021