ISLAMABAD, Jan 13: The opposition made its mark as it took full part in Senate proceedings on Tuesday for the first time in the nearly 11-month life of the upper house.

Tuesday was the first day when all opposition parties took part in the entire day's proceedings after more than 10 months of noisy protests and boycotts against the Legal Framework Order (LFO) since the election of the Senate in February last year.

Main parties of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and their smaller allies grouped in a 22-member Democratic Alliance in the Senate formally decided before the start of the session to take full part in the proceedings.

But they made it clear that the situation would not change much by challenging last month's privatization of the Habib Bank Limited (HBL) and later staging a token walkout from the house to protest against alleged firing by a paramilitary force on schoolchildren in Dera Bugti.

The MMA, which has 21 members in the Senate did not join the walkout, which ended within minutes after leader of the house Wasim Sajjad persuaded the protesters to come back.

But senators from both the Democratic Group and the MMA joined hands in questioning the transparency of the sale of HBL's 51 per cent shares to the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) for Rs22.409 billion, saying the government could have fetched a better price if it had not acted in haste.

Privatization Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh defended the sale and termed it fully transparent. He called its criticism an after-thought and agreed to face a debate on the question in the house.

The issue was raised by PML-N's Ishaq Dar, who said the HBL sale could have brought Rs35 billion if it had not been "rushed up" to benefit a particular party.

MMA's Prof Khurshid Ahmed accused the government of bypassing parliament by going ahead with the sale without holding a promised debate in the Senate last month.

Sanaullah Baloch of BNP (Mengal) challenged the Privatization Commission's right to sell national assets without the consent of federating units, that, he said, had to repay loans taken for setting up enterprises in the public sector.

The privatization minister said the sale was not hasty, the process had been going on for a year and had been "extremely transparent". Despite its cooperation with the government last month on the constitutional amendment bill, the MMA on Tuesday seemed incensed by recent army operations in the South Waziristan tribal agency to hunt alleged Taliban and Al Qaeda militants and their harbourers.

There was hardly any government response in the absence of Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat and it fell to some pro-government independent senators from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) to defend the action they said was being carried out with the "permission" of tribal elders and jirgas.

The treasury benches also had no explanation about the disappearance of Punjab Sports and Culture Minister Naeemullah Shahani in the nearby North Waziristan Agency since Saturday.

But a Fata senator, Ajmal Khan, said tribals and authorities in the area were doing their best for the recovery of the provincial minister who, he said, went missing after buying a vehicle there.

Awami National Party leader Asfandyar Wali questioned why a minister should prefer to buy a duty-free vehicle in the tribal area?

The session also witnessed two women members of the treasury benches, Education Minister Zubaida Jalal and Adviser to the prime minister on Women Development, Social Welfare and Special Education Nilofar Bakhtiar, putting up a stout defence of their government's policies and actions during a heated and prolonged question-hour.

HOUSING LOANS: Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz assured the Senate that the government would urge the nationalized commercial banks to speed up the grant of loans to people for buying and constructing houses and promised to submit a report by next Monday.