March, 15 2005	Tuesday	04 Safar 1426

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ISLAMABAD, March 14: The breakaway Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) faction known as Patriots surprised its allies in the government on Monday by walking out of National Assembly to protest against alleged vilification of their group colleague and Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat.

The token walkout was greeted with desk-thumping from opposition benches who seemed to be celebrating a dissent within the ruling coalition rather than sympathising with the minister who is due to return home on Wednesday from a visit to Britain despite a court order to the interior ministry to put his name on the Exit Control List (ECL) of people barred from foreign travel.

But the action by some group members, after two of them complained about the publicity of the case against Mr Hayat, attracted frowns from their colleagues on the treasury benches.

Group members Chaudhry Imranullah Khan and Nisar Ahmed, both from Punjab, saw a character-assassination campaign against Mr Hayat in what they called an old case of alleged default of bank loan taken for textile mill of his family.

PPP (Patriots) ministers Sher Afgan Niazi (law and parliamentary affairs) and Chaudhry Nauraiz Shakoor (science and technology) also followed the protesters but it was not clear whether they had joined the walkout or had gone with the ruling coalition chief whip Nasrullah Dreshak to bring the protesters back in less than a minute.

One group member, parliamentary secretary for defence Tanvir Hussain Syed, a known critic of the minister Hayat, did not join the walkout.

After the Supreme Court dismissed a bail petition by the minister last week, an accountability court in Lahore asked the interior ministry to put on the ECL the names of Mr Hayat and seven other people involved in the loan default case instituted by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).