ISLAMABAD, Dec 15: The Senate Standing Committee on Defence will again take up the issues of the purchase of two aeroplanes on Friday, Dawn has learnt. The two aeroplanes, one for use of VVIPs and the other Saab aircraft with surveillance systems, were reportedly being purchased from Sweden at a cost of over one billion dollars.

Notices for the meeting had been issued to Defence Minister, Rao Sikandar Iqbal, Minister for Defence Production Habibullah Warraich, officials of the two ministries and all members of the committee.

The last meeting of the committee was held on December 2 but it remained inconclusive as it could not complete even the first agenda item of purchase of VVIP aircraft.

The meeting was requisitioned by four opposition senators Farhatullah Babar and Rukhsana Zuberi of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP), Sardar Mehtab Abbasi of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and Kamran Murtaza of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA).

Soon after the meeting, the opposition members of the committee had said that the government had failed to give satisfactory replies to the questions raised by them in the committee meeting on the issue of purchase of two VVIP aircraft.

In their joint statement, Farhatullah Babar, Rukhsana Zuberi and Sardar Mahtab Abbasi had said the explanation given by the government was not convincing to justify incurring heavy expenditure at a time when the nation was seeking donations for earthquake reconstruction.

The opposition members also demanded to know whether a force majure clause existed in the contract agreement to which recourse could be made to cancel the deal at this stage and divert resources towards reconstruction. The opposition also wanted to know the balance of liability on both the seller and buyer in the event of cancellation of deal.

The opposition senators had also expressed their surprise and dismay over the Senate Secretariat statement issued after the meeting in which it had claimed that all questions raised with regard to the purchase of two VVIP aircraft were satisfactorily answered by the government.