HYDERABAD, Feb 2: Sine die adjournment of the proceedings of the Hyderabad district council session here on Monday remained an enigma.

Convener Zafar Ali Rajput resumed session at around 11.30 am to dispose of the remaining items on the agenda.

As far as current session of the council is concerned, it was only on Monday that the session began on time although the members had not turned up.

On Saturday when the session was adjourned till today it was Hussain Bux Hussaini who had drawn the attention of the chair to proceedings of the session that begins normally two hours late. When he urged the chair to commence proceedings of the house regardless of quorum, he was told that it was mandatory.

Normally, convener resumed in his seat after being informed that almost all members have turned-up in the council hall. It has hardly happened in the last four years that members had turned up on time in the session despite countless rulings by chair to this effect. Even media personnel and officials arrive before members’ reach the council.

But Monday’s adjournment of the council’s session mystified members.

The convener resumed the chair without completion of quorum at around 1130 hours while 21 members were present. Neither majority of members nor journalists, who regularly cover council’s sessions, had arrived by then.

It prompted PPP’s Awam Dost Panel-backed (ADP) nazim Mehboob Abro to point out lack of quorum. The convener adjourned it for five minutes and extended it to another 10 minutes for members to turn up.

When he resumed his seat, he didn’t find Abro and others in the house thus he adjourned session sine die while deferring their resolution.

The chair didn’t take-up resolution of Javed Kardar pertaining to working of civil hospital Hyderabad and sought to highlight fact that hospital administration always cried of non-availability of medicines and asked the patients to bring expensive drugs from medical stores adding that patients then virtually beg outside hospital for arranging costly medicines. He also mentioned insanitation in hospital.

“Since both Abro and Nasir Baloch were not there that’s why I had to adjourn the session sine die while deferring their resolutions ”, the convenor said. He added that he had observed on Saturday that the session would begin on time so he started proceedings today accordingly. About civil hospital’s resolution of Kardar, he said that the mover had said on Saturday that report of Dr. Arif Razmi, the chairman of council’s committee on health, has already been submitted therefore he doesn’t press this resolution.

The chair, however, conveniently ignored the fact that Dr. Razmi had himself clarified that report submitted by him was in fact in response to another resolution that was tabled by Nasir Baloch earlier. He had said that present resolution is a separate issue.

Razmi’s report was quite negative in terms of hospital’s working and embarrassing for hospital’s medical superintendent Dr. Abdul Jabbar Sheikh. It highlighted the fact that university professors and senior registrars don’t have any interest as far as patient’s care is concerned.

The house was to take-up resolutions of Nasir Baloch, felicitating Governor Punjab Salman Taseer for supporting union nazims in Punjab against whom a smear campaign had been launched by the provincial government. He had already tabled it with the permission of the chair on Saturday.

On Abro’s request, the convener had clubbed together his out of turn resolution with Baloch’s as it sought to laud services of President Asif Ali Zardari for adopting a national conciliatory approach in the country to take everybody on board for cohesion. The debate on both these resolutions was deferred till today.

The other resolutions of Nasir Baloch about illegal bus stands in his union council-4 of City taluka and exaggerated advertisement campaign of housing schemes; Abro’s resolution, seeking report on recent deaths of animals in Rani Bagh and expenditure and presentation of posthumous award to slain PPP leader Benazir Bhutto by UN and another to federal information ministry Sherry Rehman were deferred by the chair after session was adjourned till sine die.

Later, Mehboob Abro strongly reacted to abrupt adjournment of session. He told journalists in the council that his out of turn resolution in appreciation of President Asif Zardari’s efforts to take everyone on board and get prime minister elected unopposed through his national reconciliation policy was not taken-up deliberately.

“When Sindh Governor Ishratul Ebad Khan’ services could be eulogised then why not President’s?, he asked. He described Monday’s session as illegal. He said that MQM and PPP are coalition partners, therefore, council’s session should be requisitioned for taking-up his resolutions.