Sindh Assembly starts pre-budget debate amid walkout by PTI, GDA lawmakers

As the Sindh Assembly on Friday commenced discussion on the next provincial budget, the legislators of two opposition political parties, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), boycotted the proceedings stating that they should have earlier been informed about commencement of the debate.

The PTI and GDA MPAs staged a walkout as soon as Speaker Agha Siraj Khan Durrani announced that the House would begin the pre-budget discussion. They said they had no prior knowledge that the House would commence the pre-budget discussion, due to which they had done no homework to participate in the debate.

They said the speaker’s announcement to begin the pre-budget discussion caught them by surprise. GDA lawmaker Shaharyar Khan Mahar was the first MPA who raised the issue and objected to the sudden announcement by the speaker regarding commencement of the pre-budget discussion.

A heated exchange of arguments took place between Mahar and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukesh Kumar Chawla as the former protested that the opposition had no prior intimation about the debate on the budgetary affairs.

The fellow legislators of the GDA stood from their seats to register their protest during the verbal clash between Mahar and Chawla. The leader of the opposition, Haleem Adil Sheikh, who belongs to the PTI, said he too had no prior knowledge about the pre-budget debate in the House. He urged the speaker to put off the debate for one day to let the opposition legislators do their homework.

Later, the GDA lawmakers staged a walkout and the PTI MPAs followed suit. The speaker later lamented that the proceedings of the House were always marred whenever the opposition leader opted to attend the session. Durrani said he would run the House according to the rules without being influenced by the opposition leader. PPP MPA Qasim Soomro said that last year’s floods in the province had massively devastated the civic infrastructure and farm sector. He said that up to 20,000 school buildings had been damaged in the province due to the floods.

The PPP lawmaker said the provincial government had established makeshift tent schools for education of the children in the affected areas. He said that the budgetary spending of the province had been massively impacted by the floods.

Sindh should get a special share from the country’s financial resources for ensuring the rehabilitation of the flood-hit areas, Soomro said. He remarked that the Sindh government had the utmost resolve to rebuild all the houses damaged by the floods and special initiatives had been taken in the public healthcare sector. Later, the speaker adjourned the

session till Monday 2pm.