ISLAMABAD, March 30: The government has postponed the expansion of federal cabinet until holding of a joint session of the parliament, government sources said.

They told Dawn on Sunday that the government did not want any disturbance or rumpus in the parliament when President Pervez Musharraf would address the joint session.

According to the constitution, the first joint session of every parliamentary year is addressed by the president.

They said the government also wanted to asses the performance of parliamentarians sitting on the treasury benches and those belonging to the government allies.

The government, they further said, believed that once the federal cabinet was completed, the neglected parliamentarians hoping to get different portfolios, would obviously agitate during the joint session.

Many parliamentarians both in the opposition and on the treasury benches, they said, were eager to get the remaining portfolios.

Some of former federal ministers, who had recently become senators, such as, former railways minister Lt-Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi (retired) and former information minister Nisar A. Memon, were stated to be from the president’s lobby and strongest candidates for the cabinet.

Similarly, the government had assured its coalition partner Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) that its parliamentarians would be accommodated in the cabinet.

The sources said some parliamentarians of the People’s Party Parliamentarians Patriots had also been assured that they would be given some of the remaining portfolios.

In this connection, a PPP front-line leader, Mr Sher Afghan, was likely to join PPP-Patriots so that he could show his loyalty to the government to become a federal minister, they said.

Meanwhile, an official of the National Assembly Secretariat told Dawn that the government had, so far, not given any intimation to the secretariat about holding of the joint session of the parliament.

“We are still waiting for the announcement of the date of joint session so that we could complete the necessary arrangements,” he said.