The Opposition and government legislators in session of Punjab Assembly on Friday blamed each other for ongoing flour crisis in the country. The session started almost two hours late under the chair of Deputy Speaker Sardar Dost Muhammad Mazari.

Pakistan People's Party Parliamentary leader Syed Hassan Murtaza demanded government to constitute a parliamentary committee consisting of members from both treasury and Opposition benches in order to identify those who are responsible for the flour crisis. He said the PPP had also set up hunger-strike camp on stairs of the Assembly against corruption, inflation and shortage of flour.

Earlier, the committee constituted on the directions of Deputy Speaker held a successful dialogue with Hassan Murtaza who was sitting on hunger strike since Thursday evening. He called off the strike on the request of committee members including provincial ministers Chaudhry Zaheer Uddin, Fayyaz-ul-Hassan Chohan and Opposition MPAs Rana Muhammad Iqbal, Chaudhry Iqbal and Musa Gillani.

PPP MPA Makhdoom Usman Mahmood while speaking on the point of order said that instead of blaming the Sindh government for flour crisis the Punjab government should accept that its mismanagement caused flour crisis. He said the government exported wheat in the month of October last year and now it is importing wheat in the month of January and February. Usman also apprehended sugar crisis in coming days if the government did not stop export of sugar.

While responding to the criticism of Opposition, Information Minister Fayyaz Chohan said there is no flour crisis in the country as was the case in the past.

PML-N MPA Sardar Awais Laghari said that situation in Kashmir is very critical. He also said that they did not go to the Kaulalampur Summit despite their commitment which severely damaged their foreign policy. He said that Prime Minister Imran Khan and PTI government failed to win the support of international community on the Kashmir issue.

Earlier, PML-N MPA Azma Bukhari had filed a resolution demanding resignation of Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar. According to the resolution, corruption increases by 300 percent in Punjab despite the fact that not a single mega project was stared during the last one and a half year. It said the Punjab government has failed to establish its writ in the province since it came into power.

PML-N MPAs Samiullah Khan and Malik Nadeem Kamran had written a letter to speaker Punjab Assembly Chaudhry Pervez Elahi in which they said that meetings of Public Accounts Committee-II are being conducted with incomplete quorum which is a sheer violation of rules. The opposition members tendered their resignations from all committees as protest for not notifying the Chairman PAC-I. However, the resignations have not been accepted. According to the letter, meetings are being held behind closed doors and government officials are being pressurized to give statements against previous governments and leaders of opposition parties.