HARIPUR, July 16: The Haripur tehsil council on Friday approved the 2004-05 budget amid a walkout and sit-in by opposition members. The council met with Mohammad Amin Khan in the chair.

When the session began for a second day of debate on the fiscal document, the opposition members assailed the tehsil nazim for what they called ignoring 12 union councils in last revised budget. They charged that the budget had been passed 'in the darkness of night'.

The opposition members, including three woman councillors, later staged a walkout and marched up to the entrance gate of Tehsil Municipal Administration. They were wearing black arm-bands and carrying placards inscribed with anti-nazim and anti-budget slogans.

They staged a sit-in in front of the office of tehsil nazim where they chanted slogans against the tehsil nazim. Opposition members Prof Muhammad Din, Sheikh Abid, Malik Razmat, and Gul Ambreen Minhas said on the occasion that the nazim was punishing a vast population of 12 union councils by depriving them of development funds.

Even though they had submitted lists of their development schemes, these were 'deliberately' deleted from the uplift programme, they alleged. They said that Rs16 million was disbursed among 20 union councils out of 37 in the Haripur Tehsil.

If the nazim had anything to settle with opposition members, he should block their honoraria instead of denying people their funds. They said that the Haripur tehsil nazim was bent upon settling score with his political opponents who had neither brought a no-confidence motion against him, nor supported the 'fake' one his own supporters had tabled.

Funds were being wasted in urban union councils on pavements of already concrete streets while urban parts remained deprived of basic amenities like potable water, roads, sewerage system and streetlights, they said.

Tehsil nazim Iftikhar Ahmad Khan approached the opposition members and urged them to get back to the council or hold talks with him on the issue of revised budget, but they continued their protest.

Later, the council with a reduced strength of 27 members, approved Rs96.831 million TMA budget for 2004-05 with some alterations in the development and non-development expenditures. It approved Rs12.193 million for uplift schemes. The non-development expenditure was revised downward from Rs52.493 million to Rs55.254 million.