ISLAMABAD: Despite thin attendance leading to a lack of quorum in the house, Monday’s session of the National Assembly was not uneventful. The opposition aggressively called for extending the much-touted National Action Plan to the PML-N ruled province of Punjab, where they said lawlessness and corruption were equal to, if not more than, the other three provinces.

Two main opposition parties — PPP and MQM — also staged separate walkouts from the house on different issues.

From the outset, both PPP and PTI took to criticising the federal government for what they called its “selective campaign” against corruption and extremism.

Chaudhry Ghulam Sarwar, the PTI MNA from Taxila, seemed to deliver his remarks on cue from his former party, the PPP, when he accused the federal government of being unfair to the smaller provinces.

Federation accused of being selective in campaign against terrorism, corruption

“At the moment, it seems as if Punjab is the only province where everything is going smoothly and politicians from other provinces, particularly Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are corrupt,” he said.

In KPK, sitting provincial lawmakers and ministers that were accused of corruption had been arrested and the same had happened in Sindh. “If no such action is witnessed in Punjab, where alleged cases of corruption of a far bigger magnitude have been reported, people will certainly ask questions,” he said.

The PTI lawmaker also had a special set of questions for Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, whom he defeated in the last general elections.

“Is Punjab, where by the interior minister’s own admission a significant number of madressahs are receiving financial assistance from abroad, free of terrorism and extremism,” he asked.

“Can someone from the treasury benches tell me why no action has been taken against banned organisations that, just by changing their names, are allowed to operate with impunity in the province? Has Punjab become corruption free?”

According to the PTI legislator, NAP had yielded positive results in the tribal areas and Karachi and now it was time take the plan to Punjab.

Similar calls came from the PPP camp as well. Senior PPP lawmaker Yousaf Talpur came down hard on the federal government for targeting politicians from Sindh. “If the federal government doesn’t like us Sindhis sitting here, why doesn’t it accept that in so many words and literally push us against the wall”, said Mr Talpur.

Referring to the latest investigation launched by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against Munawar Talpur for allegedly committing corruption, Mr Yousaf Talpur said it seemed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was returning to the politics of the 1990s. He said his party had faced charges of corruption in the past and didn’t mind doing so again.

Mr Talpur also asked why NAB and FIA were only active in Sindh and why this so-called campaign against corruption didn’t extend to Punjab.

The finalisation of the local government (LG) structure in Karachi was the main issue for the MQM, which also prompted its members to stage a token walkout.

Speaking on a point of order, Mohammad Rehan Hashmi said the Sindh government was trying its best to delay the formation of LGs in Karachi. Mr Hashmi accused the PPP government of using its influence in the metropolis to confer funds on party workers.

Quorum remained an issue throughout the sitting on Monday, but nobody pointed it. It was only towards the end of the session that Numan Islam Sheikh of the PPP asked for a head count.

This came just after the PPP staged a token walkout against the NAB investigation into Mr Talpur, but nobody from the treasury benches went to the gallery to bring the protesting party back. It is a convention that when a party stages a walkout, someone from the treasury benches requests the protesting members to return to the house.

Published in Dawn, January 12th, 2016