KARACHI: Treasury does it all alone in 20 minutes: Supplementary budget passed
By Habib Khan Ghori
KARACHI, June 26: The Sindh government on Monday outwitted the opposition when it, taking advantage of the latter’s absence, managed to pass the supplementary budget 2005-06 in a session that lasted only 20 minutes.
Contrary to the tradition of starting the session one to two hours behind the scheduled time, the Monday session started at around 9:45am, only 15 minutes late.
Under a strategy, adopted by the government for the day’s proceedings, the treasury benches turned up at right time – 9:30am – and got the proceedings started 15 minutes later.
Within 20 minutes of proceedings, they gave approval to the supplementary budget and got the session adjourned till next day. Quite a few members from the opposition side were present till the chair called it a day.
Even the representatives of electronic and print media, who had initially failed to get wind of the treasury benches’ strategy, were caught unaware and could make it only after the session was over.
Later, the opposition accused the treasury benches of breaching the agreement between the two sides in the House Business Committee to commence the proceedings at 10am. “The government side has violated the understanding as it wanted to run away from a discussion on its misdeeds in the budget,” said the Leader of the Opposition in the Sindh Assembly Nisar Ahmed Khuhro.The summer timings of the assembly session are 9:30am to 1:30pm but usually, because of the quorum problem, the proceedings do not start before 11am. However, keeping in view the importance and possibly long debate, the House Business Committee had decided to ensure commencement of the proceedings latest by 10:30 am and to hold afternoon session also.
The government’s strategy deprived the joint opposition an opportunity to speak on the charged expenditure and demand for grants in the supplementary budget statement. When the house was called to order at 10:45am, only five opposition members – Ghulam Qadir Chandio, Zahid Bhurgari, Anwar Mehar, Ghulam Majddid Asran and Nasreen Chandio – were present in the house. The number rose to nine with the arrival of Ali Nawaz Shah, Pir Amjad, Salim Hingoro and Abdul Qadir Soomro before Speaker Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah adjourned the proceedings till Tuesday at 9:30am.
Although, the opposition had deposited more than 500 cut motions with the assembly secretariat in relation to the supplementary budget, not a single motion could be moved as their movers were not present when the speaker invited members to speak.
As such, all 53 demands for grant were clubbed together and put to the house, which approved them.Earlier, at the outset, soon after recitation of the Holy Quran and Naat, the speaker gave floor to Law Minister Iftikhar Chaudhry, who moved a motion seeking suspension of the day’s question hour. The speaker put the motion to the house, which approved it by a majority vote.
Senior Minister Syed Sardar Ahmed took up the item number IV for discussion on the charged expenditure. The speaker asked the house if anyone would like to speak, but there was no positive answer and the speaker called for taking up the next item on the order of the day.
The senior minister moved to the next item – demands for grant – and the Speaker, after clubbing together all 53 demands for grant, put them to the house for a vote. A majority of present MPAs favoured the same and the supplementary budget 2005-06 stood approved. The total supplementary budget for current expenditures is Rs7.2 billion, including the charged expenditure of Rs452 million.
The opposition members, Anwar Mehar and Ghulam Mujaddid Asran of PPP, could not take up their cut motions as all the demands for grant had been clubbed together when put to vote.
