LAHORE: Irritated by non-production of ruling party’s lawmaker from Lahore Nazir Chohan, the Punjab Assembly speaker suspended proceedings of the house for next day disallowing any business here on Thursday.

Speaker Parvez Elahi also threatened not to allow the government to do any lawmaking until his orders were implemented.

Mr Chohan is, at present, in the custody of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on a complaint by Shehzad Akbar, special assistant to prime minister on accountability, for running a ‘malicious’ campaign and delivering a ‘hate speech’ against him on social media platforms.

Earlier, police had arrested him on similar charges but he was bailed out on Wednesday only to be detained by the FIA.

The speaker had issued production orders for the MPA a day ago.

“Why Nazir Chohan has not been produced in the house?” asked Mr Elahi. “Do these people (bureaucrats) want to wage a war against parliament?”

He stressed that he had got the MPAs’ privileges bill unanimously passed by the house and pledged not to permit the bureaucrats to infringe upon the privileges of the house.

“It’s neither a jungle nor is someone a Tarzan (a mythical jungle character) here. Until Nazir Chohan is produced in the house, the sitting will be held daily only to discuss this issue, while no official business (lawmaking) will be allowed to be transacted till that time,” he said.

When proceedings of the 34th session resumed after a two-day break here on Thursday afternoon, Jahangir Tareen group’s Saeed Akbar Niwani on a point of order raised the issue of non-production of Mr Chohan in violation of the speaker’s direction.

Mr Niwani said the MPA was arrested two days ago “only for asking a public office-holder whether he was a Muslim or an Ahmadi.”

Insisting that the faith of public office holder may be questioned, he alleged that Mr Akbar activated the FIA apprehending that the Punjab government (through its police) may not penalise the MPA and he also directed the FIA to torture Nazir Chohan.

He said if production orders issued by the Punjab Assembly speaker were not implemented, it’s an open war on parliament.

PML-N’s Pir Ashraf Rasool said Shehzad Akbar is an ‘unreined horse’ that needed to be reined in as the house echoed with anti-Akbar slogans.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2021