LAHORE, June 9: The opposition in the Punjab Assembly announced on Thursday that it would move a no-confidence motion against Speaker Chaudhry Afzal Sahi. Opposition leader Qasim Zia, PML-N’s Rana Sanaullah Khan and MMA’s Asghar Gujjar alleged that the speaker had become a party in the case of floor crossing by various opposition members and, thus, lost his neutral role as custodian of the house.

It was claimed that at least 106 MPAs had signed the no-trust motion, which was likely to be moved in the house during the ongoing budget session.

Mr Zia, after walking out of the house along with all opposition members, told reporters that Mr Sahi was not forwarding to the election commission their references against the MPAs who had joined the ruling PML.

“This is an unconstitutional act by the speaker because under the article 63-A no chairman of a house can withhold any reference for more than two days,” he said, “while Mr Sahi has withheld their references for around 20 days.” It was an attempt to derail and destabilize democracy, he added.

The opposition MPAs staged a symbolic sit-in at the main entrance of the assembly where they also chanted slogans against alleged partiality of the speaker.

Law and parliamentary affairs minister Muhammad Basharat Raja told reporters after the budget speech that more opposition MPAs would soon join the ruling PML, as they were fed up with their leaders’ attitude.

He criticized the opposition’s raising slogans against the speaker in the house and lauded Mr Sahi for his patience and forbearance to uphold sanctity of the democratic institution. He hoped that the opposition would mend its ways in future.

Answering a question, he said the speaker was authorized to hold back the references to verify validity of the authority filing them.

Meanwhile, PML-N’s Rana Sanaullah and Muhammad Mahdi said the Punjab budget had been prepared on hypothetical grounds in the absence of the National Finance Commission award.

They feared that the whole budget would be disturbed if Gen Musharraf changed basis of the division of resources among provinces in the NFC.

They regretted that the provincial government had reduced allocation for education from three per cent to less than two per cent against its tall claims of producing “an educated Punjab” by 2015. They also criticized low allocations for the health sector.