SAHIWAL, March 28: District Nazim Rai Hassan Nawaz’s powers stand curtailed as a committee constituted by the Punjab chief minister has become active to run the affairs of the district government. Supervised by agriculture minister Arshad Khan Lodhi, the committee was formed after the district council’s budget session on Feb 27 last.

Elected as an independent, Nawaz had defeated chief minister’s nominee Naveed Aslam Lodhi, son-in-law of Arshad Khan Lodhi.

He got the district council budget passed in the absence of the convener/naib district nazim Malak Faisal Langrial. Terming the session illegal, the government formed the committee and suspended the budget.

The committee met here the other day rather secretly and finalized fresh budget proposals. The budget approved earlier had an allocation of one million rupees for each of the 89 union councils. The committee slashed this grant to Rs 700,000. The ‘saving’,it is learnt, will be diverted to ruling party MPs.

Similarly, Rs500,000 development allocation for each woman, minority and peasant member was reduced to Rs 300,000. An amount of Rs18,800,000 allocated for the district nazim was entirely dropped from the fresh proposals.

The committee also cancelled a number of development schemes in order to save funds for PML MPAs to strengthen party position in the district.

The projects dropped are: the construction of Government College of Women’s outer wall, a wrestling stadium, a new road near Chak 6/11-L, a bypass from Government Comprehensive High School to Hall Road.

The committee also decided to re-convene the district council to get the fresh budget proposals approved. Also present on the occasion were district nazim Rai Hassan Nawaz, naib nazim Malak Faisal Ahmed Langrial and members of the provincial assembly from Sahiwal.

STOLEN: Unidentified people riding a truck removed a Mepco transformer and wires near Chak 134/9-L on Monday night. As a result, power supply was suspended to Chak 135/9-L, Chak 134/9-L, Chak 104/9-L and Chak 102/9-L.