ISLAMABAD, Dec 30: Scenes of pandemonium were once again witnessed in the Senate as members continued their fiery debate on Kalabagh dam on Friday.

The day’s proceedings were also marked by two token protest walkouts by opposition parties, one during the Kalabagh debate and an earlier one over a fresh offensive by security forces in Dera Bugti district of Balochistan province.

On the third day of what has often been an acrimonious debate on “issues relating to the construction of large water dams in the country”, some ruling coalition members seemed unimpressed by the reports of the government’s hand-picked technical committee and a parliamentary committee preferring alternatives and still pressed on for the Kalabagh site in the Mianwali district of Punjab.

The Senate first plunged into an uproar of opposition protests as leader of the house Wasim Sajjad announced that the government would arrange a briefing for the house on Monday on the issue by the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda), which some opposition senators say is dominated by Punjabi officials.

To make this announcement, Mr Sajjad seized upon a proposal by Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) parliamentary leader Maulana Gul Naseeb that the government start with the Bhasha dam in the Northern Areas and in the meanwhile take more technical advice about Kalabagh.

But in spite of endorsement from presiding officer Mohammad Akram of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML), the move backfired as the opposition rejected the idea amid noisy protests, although Awami National Party (ANP) member Ilyas Ahmed Bilour said the opposition would welcome briefings by independent experts from all provinces but not by what he called “zar kharid” (slave) Wapda.

Though the opposition parties made it clear they will not attend a Wapda briefing, Mr Sajjad and PML’s chief whip Kamil Ali Agha said the briefing would be held in any case at 1:00pm on Monday in an apparent move to project the perceived merits of the Kalabagh site over others.

But some time later the opposition’s chants became shriller and members walked out of the house in protest when the chair gave the floor to Minister of State for Environment Malik Amin Aslam Khan, who is not a senator, to speak in the debate, in place of PML’s Mrs Tanvir Khalid from Karachi, who too protested against the switch of turns then and during a speech later in support of the Kalabagh dam.

Mr Malik made a well-prepared speech to a sparsely-attended house after the opposition walkout while Mr Akram, who was chairing the session in the absence of Senate chairman Mohammedmian Soomro, ignored repeated shouts from the MMA’s Mohammad Ismail Buledi, who had stayed on in the house, that the chamber lacked quorum.

The ruling coalition suffered another embarrassment earlier during the debate when Mohim Khan Baloch of the Balochistan National Party (Awami), which is a member of the ruling coalition, opposed the Kalabagh dam and called for the construction of Bhasha dam, on grounds that all provinces were unanimous in the support for it.

WALKOUT OVER BALOCHISTAN: Members of the opposition walked out of the house at the start of the day’s proceedings after Jamhoori Watan Party’s Amanullah Kanrani, speaking on a point of order, said the paramilitary Frontier Corps had mounted a fresh offensive in Dera Bugti earlier in the morning with mortar fire and bombing and complained of arrests of political activists in other districts as well.