LAHORE, April 19: The chief minister has given a go-ahead for the construction of a new hall for holding proceedings of the Punjab Assembly.

The new hall, to be built at the grounds behind the existing assembly building, would be the biggest parliamentary house in the country as it could accommodate 750 members at a time, Speaker Afzal Sahi told reporters on Monday.

The first instalment from the funds to be allocated for the project would be granted in the budget for the financial year 2004-05, he said. The existing Punjab Assembly building was constructed in 1937 for housing only 58 MPAs.

It had been efficiently accommodating 240 members until 1999 when the military took over power. When the political process was restored in October, 2002, the number of constituencies of the Punjab Assembly had increased to 371.

To accommodate this big strength of MPAs, over half of the portion of the visitors' gallery was also included in the "floor of the house". However, MPAs used this part of the house only in the first two sessions of the assembly and later all of them moved down to the main floor complaining the speaker ignored those sitting in the former visitors' gallery.

The MPAs were allowed to sit wherever they found any vacant seat. This overcrowding created inconvenience not only for MPAs themselves but also for the speaker and the journalists covering the house proceedings due to non-allocation of seats to the members.