ISLAMABAD: In a rare move to discipline parliamentarians, National Assembly Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi on Wednesday suspended PML-Q parliamentary leader Faisal Saleh Hayat for a day and a PPP back-bencher, Jamshaid Ahmad Dasti, for the rest of the ongoing session for their role in a rumpus that cut short house proceedings on Tuesday.

The house approved, by voice vote, the deputy speaker’s action against the two men for what he called abusing the rules of procedure and disregarding the authority of the chair as well his decision to constitute an ethics committee to monitor the use of objectionable language by lawmakers inside and outside the house.

There were not many ‘no’ votes because of a sparse attendance at opposition benches when Mr Kundi put his decision to vote at the end of the day’s proceedings, which were boycotted by most members of the PML-Q but attended by a ‘like-minded’ rebel group of the party of one-time loyalists of former president Pervez Musharraf.

The action, the like of which has not been taken in the lower house in recent years, came after Mr Kundi said at the start of the sitting he had called for a verbatim report of Tuesday’s uproar that happened in his absence after PML-N’s senior member Sardar Mehtab Ahmad Khan demanded suspension of Mr Dasti’s membership for the rest of the current session for what he called a ‘shameful’ conduct of the member, though he conceded wrong words were used also by the PML-Q leader in his altercation with PPP’s Azra Fazal Pechuho, a sister of President Asif Ali Zardari.

The previous most notable action by the chair against a National Assembly member was an order in the 1970s by then speaker Sahibzada Farooq Ali for the removal of, first Ahmed Raza Kasuri and then, other opposition members from the house for obstructing the proceedings.

PPP’s Abdul Qadir Patel, who was chairing proceedings during Tuesday’s trouble, had expunged Mr Hayat’s objectionable remarks, but PPP members burst into an uproar chanting ‘lota, lota’ — a usual description for a turncoat — for the PML-Q leader for his floor-crossing after the 2002 election and Mr Dasti ran to the front rows apparently swearing at the man, who became an interior minister in a pro-Musharraf coalition government whose formation was made possible by his defection with a group of about 20 PPP members.

Mr Kundi told reporters later that the suspension order for Mr Hayat would be applicable on Thursday, though it was not immediately clear how many days Mr Dasti would miss the house, which was originally scheduled to remain in session until Friday but could wait for the return of Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi from an urgent trip to the United States to wind up an opposition-sought debate on the so-called Kerry-Lugar bill for US aid to Pakistan.

The debate, which began on Oct 7, continued earlier in the day with a toned down criticism of the bill by PML-N’s Ahsan Iqbal and PML-F’s Jahangir Tarin for its conditionalities that they said impinged on Pakistan’s sovereignty and an oratorical defence from PPP’s Minister of State for Information Syed Samsan Ali Bokhari, who said the government would countenance no harm to the country’s security interests or the nuclear programme. But the discussion seemed to have become redundant in view of the foreign minister’s apparently final talks with US authorities before possible signing of the bill into law by President Barack Obama in the next few days.

Mr Ahsan conceded it was now a ‘post-facto inconsequential debate’ before suggesting that Pakistan should enact its own law forbidding acceptance of any conditions for foreign aid that could compromise its sovereignty and sign a bilateral treaty with the United States against imposing such conditions.