QUETTA: The Balochistan Assembly on Saturday passed Rs19.93 billion supplementary budget for the outgoing financial year after the opposition parties staged a walkout for not being allowed to initiate a debate on it.

Deputy Speaker Sardar Babar Khan Musakhail, who presided over the session in the absence of Speaker Mir Abdul Qudus Bizenjo, asked Finance Minister Mir Zahoor Ahmed Buledi to present demands for grants on supplementary budget 2018-19.

However, the opposition members tabled 22 cut motions and sought a debate on the supplementary budget first. Legislator Sardar Abdul Rehman Khetiran said the opposition was wasting the time of the house as it was prerogative of the leader of the house to convene session for approval of grants.

As the deputy speaker asked the opposition to move their cut motions one by one on the demand for grant, opposition leader Malik Sikander Khan, Sanaullah Baloch, Nasarullah Zerey and other members protested with the result that the chair had to adjourn the session for 10 minutes allowing the treasury and opposition members to settle the issue.

Opposition stages walkout for not being allowed to debate; slams discrepancies in budget

When the session resumed after the meeting, Mr Khan along with other opposition members walked out of the house without commenting on their meeting with the treasury members.

In the absence of opposition members, Finance Minister Mir Zahoor Ahmed Buledi moved 23 demands for grants one by one in the house, which approved them without any difficulty as no cut motion could be tabled against them.

The demands for grants of the supplementary budget included Rs9.75 billion for pension, Rs4.18 billion for expenditures in the health sector, Rs2.50 billion for public health engineering and over Rs1.67 billion for expenditures on subsides.

Soon after approval of the supplementary budget, the opposition members returned to the house and the opposition leader started a debate on the annual budget 2019-20, which had been presented in the assembly by the finance minister three days ago.

Opposition leader Malik Sikander Khan said the government had committed discrimination in allocation of funds for the public sector development programme as the constituencies of opposition parties were completely ignored in the budget. “Only treasury benches were given importance and allocated huge funds in PSDP,” he said.

BNP-M lawmaker Malik Naseer Ahmed Shahwani said the government had not allocated funds for the education, health and other facilities for one million people of the Sariab area. He said only two colleges were not enough for the area youth.

Zabit Reki of the JUI-F presented the PSDP book to the chief minister of Balochistan and said that the government should show him which development scheme had been mentioned in it for his constituency.

Also criticising discrepancies in the budget allocations, Maulana Noorullah of the JUI-F said that huge funds were allocated just for the constituency of the chief minister and the Balochistan minister for local government while most of other areas were completed neglected in the budget.

Published in Dawn, June 23rd, 2019