LAHORE, June 22: Punjab Assembly Speaker Afzal Sahi claims that 80 per cent of the opposition members are against commotion in the house, as the treasury criticized the opposition leader and exiled leadership for ‘sabotaging’ its reconciliatory move.

Admitting the opposition’s right to differ from and protest against the government policies, Mr Sahi said he had never barred the ‘noes’ benches from exercising their privilege.

He, however, made it clear that he reserved the right to take all necessary steps for checking rioting in the house.

Claiming that 80 per cent of the MPAs of the opposition shared these views with him, he said seeing the attitude of these friends he had formed a committee, comprising six members each from the treasury and the opposition, to devise a joint strategy for smoothly running the house.

The request for setting up the body had come from the opposition when its over a dozen MPAs called on him in his chamber on Tuesday, he added.

But the opposition boycotted proceedings of the committee, as their leader Qasim Zia alleged that he had not been consulted for nominations on the panel.

Mr Sahi said MMA’s Arshad Baggu had provided a list of the opposition nominees.

He hoped that both the treasury and the opposition would one day sit together for working out a formula to run the house in a better way.

Earlier, law minister Raja Basharat said on a point of order that to settle the nomination issue the committee had asked Mr Zia to send any member of his liking for representation of his party (the PPP), but the opposition leader refused even to come on line.

He said it depicted negative attitude of the opposition and that they were not free to take a decision on their own even on a positive subject.

Alleging that the boycott was pre-planned, he condemned the exiled leadership for destabilizing democracy for their vested interest.