ISLAMABAD, June 20: The National Assembly speaker on Wednesday sent two disqualification references against Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan to the Election Commission, provoking an opposition boycott of the budget session for the day and a possible war of parliamentary references that could implicate top government figures.

The boycott, amid the second stage of the passage of the federal budget for the fiscal year 2007-08, enabled the government to rush demands for grants for four ministries through the house without any debate before the house was adjourned until 10.30am on Thursday, when opposition is likely to bring tit-for-tat references.

The move followed a token opposition walkout at the start of the discussion and voting on demands for grants for government ministries to protest against Tuesday’s missile strike, or a blast of explosives, in North Waziristan that killed up to 32 people.

The opposition did not return to the house after the second walkout but said it would come back on Thursday and a member of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP), Qamaruzzaman Kaira, told Dawn: “We will file references tomorrow.”

He declined to give details but said one could be based on US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recently published biography that talks of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz “showing all his charms on her as a woman” during a meeting between them in March 2005, and another about ex-minister of state for communications Shahid Jamil, who resigned his office last week after the death of Pakistan-origin Canadian woman at his house.

Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain told an opposition-less house that he had sent the two references seeking Imran Khan’s disqualification as a member of the National Assembly to the Chief Election Commissioner because he found them “prima facie in order” and that he took the decision “in accordance with my wisdom and in all honesty”.

“Now it is up to him what decision he takes on this,” he said about the fate of the references, which under the constitution must be decided within three months.

Earlier this month, one of the references was filed before the speaker by some members of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the other by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi on the basis of the former cricket captain’s alleged affair with the late British heiress Sita White after his moves to approach British courts against MQM leader Altaf Hussain, now living in self-exile in London, for allegedly directing violence in Karachi.

Imran Khan was not present when some opposition members protested against what they called a retaliation against his moves to bring the MQM leader to justice in Britain after the May 12 bloodshed in Karachi, before all of them stormed out of the house chanting anti-MQM slogans.

Pakhtunkhawa Milli Awami Party chief Mahmood Khan Achakzai, who was the first to raise the issue when Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was present in the house, complained that no action was taken over the killing of nearly 50 people in Karachi — neither the governor nor the provincial government was removed — and asked the chair what heavens had fallen by Imran Khan calling one man a terrorist that references were filed for his disqualification and “you also sent them to the Election Commission.”

Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal deputy secretary-general Liaquat Baloch said it was “at the instance of the government” that action was being taken against Imran Khan for collecting evidence against a “British citizen who has committed terrorism in Pakistan”.

Khwaja Mohammad Asif of the Pakistan Muslim League-N asked how the references against Imran Khan over a 10-year-old issue “grew wings” to reach the Election Commission so soon while no notice had been taken either of references which had remained pending for long nor of “so many illegal acts” committed over the past eight years, particularly within the past three months.

PPP’s Qamaruzzaman Kaira said the government “in its last days” had resorted to filing a reference against the chief justice at one time and against Imran Khan at another and asked the Speaker what had happened to a reference “we gave you” against PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain when he became prime minister in 2004.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Niazi, most of whose remarks were inaudible owing to opposition slogan-chanting, said his reference was in accordance with law which, according to him, had rendered Imran Khan disqualified on grounds of the alleged affair and added that “these people who talk of the Constitution must face it”.

MQM member Haider Abbas Rizvi wondered why the opposition opposed the references while Imran Khan himself was ‘happy’ with the MQM taking a legal course of action against him and why religious parties and ulema were silent on the affair which, he said, was exposed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif by hiring private detectives when nobody knew about it.

Speaker Hussain, apparently referring to Mr Kaira’s complaint of no action taken over the reference against the PML president, said he did not remember any such reference coming to him, but promised to make checks and look into it if it had come.

About other unspecified references referred to by opposition members, he said some matters were pending before the Supreme Court and sub judice, but did not elaborate.

The National Assembly approved a total of 129 demands for grants worth over Rs614.44 billion for the cabinet division, and ministries of information and broadcasting, defence, commerce and communications, out of a total of 178 on the agenda for two days, while the remainder about four ministries will be taken up on Thursday.

Hundreds of cut motions proposed by opposition members mainly to raise discussion on the performance of the ministries were dropped because of their walkout while some moved before thee boycott were defeated.