KARACHI: Cut motions bulldozed in unethical way: Khuhro
By Our Reporter
KARACHI, June 26: Leader of the Opposition in the Sindh Assembly Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has accused the government of adopting unethical and devious course to guillotine 502 cut motions submitted by the opposition.
He claimed that the government’s aim was to avoid any debate on these cut motions by circumventing all important businesses, including the question hour and a debate on charged expenditure to take up the supplementary cut motions.
Addressing a press conference after the Monday session, Mr Khuhro said that it had been agreed upon in the House Business Committee that proceedings would commence at 10am as Mr Mohammad Hussain, a member of the treasury benches, had asked the opposition to line up its 10 members for the debate a few minutes earlier. It was also agreed that the question hour would not be suspended. But the ruling party’s malafide intention was exposed when it started the proceedings at 9:30am and in order to bulldoze any debate to save itself from embarrassment, it even suspended the question hour.
Commenting on the speaker’s ruling that the privilege motion moved by PPP’s women members against the chief minister could not be included in the agenda, Mr Khuhro cited Rule 119 (1) of the Rules of Procedure which stated that the bar on admittance of privilege motion was only restricted to the duration of general discussion, and not to the days following that.
Mr Khuhro maintained that it was a shame that the custodian of the house had failed to provide protection to women, who constituted a minority in the house, by not allowing the privilege motion to appear on the agenda.
He gave reference of a the budget session of June 23, 1990 when a privilege motion of Dr Khattumal appeared and admitted on the day the supplementary demands were presented. At that time, Syed Abdullah Shah was the speaker.
The rules and traditions both allowed the speaker to bring the privilege motion against the chief minister in the house, Mr Khuhro maintained.
He also came hard on the government for the charged expenditure. “Apart from the obvious deceptions in the budget 2006-07, there was one in particular that we are not allowed to suggest cuts to. This is the charged expenditure, and includes expenses of the provincial assembly and the governor. Under the guise of charged expenditure, the government has hidden many shady acts.”
This year, both the supplementary charged demands and the new expenditure reflected the government’s underhand tactics, he alleged. In the budget 2005-06, a sum of Rs950,000 was kept for repair and maintenance of transport. This was increased by 1,700 per cent and given as Rs16 million in the revised estimate, he pointed out.
In the context of the governor’s expenses, he pointed out that in 2005-06, Rs20 million had been demanded for grants, subsidies and written off loans, which then increased to Rs26.5 million in the revised budget with a new allocation of Rs20 million in the budget 2006-07.
There had been no allocations shown in the budget 2005-06 for the military secretary to the governor and his establishment building structure cell. However, the revised budget estimates were showing a spending of Rs22.7 million, Mr Khuhro said.
