ISLAMABAD, Sept 15: Opposition parties shouted out another day in the Senate on Thursday as political rivals failed to convince each other in an unprecedented row over the legality of a presiding officer named to stand in for the house chairman.

The upper house began the second sitting of its current session late by one and a half hours in the evening and consumed about the same time in opposition protest shouting or speeches from treasury benches during and after an opposition walkout before being adjourned until 10.30am on Friday without transacting any business on the agenda.

The question hour, whose turn came at the fag-end of the sitting, was disposed of without a single question being put after the presiding officer, Khalid Ranjha, declared all the printed answers to 70 questions to be “taken as read” and the only other item on the agenda — consideration of a bill to provide for the establishment of the Hydrocarbon Development Institute of Pakistan — was not taken up.

More noisy protests are expected on Friday as there were no signs of a compromise between the opposition and the treasury benches.

Both sides stuck to their views for and against the nomination of Mr Ranjha and two other ruling coalition senators by chairman Mohammedmian Soomro to preside over the session in order of precedence while the chairman remains acting president in the absence of President Pervez Musharraf from the country.

The opposition says that while the office of the deputy chairman is vacant since mid-March, Mr Soomro was required by rules to personally announce the panel of presiding officers inside the house at the start of the session — rather than sending an administrative order — or the house should have elected a presiding officer.

But the government view, as explained by leader of the house Wasim Sajjad, was that Mr Soomro continued to be a functioning chairman because he was only performing the president’s functions — rather than being whole-time acting president as would be the case when the president’s office becomes vacant – but his coming to the house to preside over it would be against parliamentary traditions for such situations.

As they did on the first day of the session on Tuesday, opposition members chanted “no, no” while remaining seated as Mr Ranjha, a former law minister, entered the house to preside over the sitting after a day’s recess.

Soon after the traditional recitation from the Holy Quran, opposition leader Raza Rabbani, addressing the Senate secretary rather than the chair, said there was “a stranger in the chair” and that the secretary would be responsible for the alleged illegality.

And then all the opposition members stood in their seats and began shouting “no, no” and desk-thumping that made speeches from Mr Wasim Sajjad and some other members of the treasury benches barely audible.

However, the opposition staged a walkout after one of the nosiest protests in the present Senate, allowing the treasury benches a field day to denounce the protesters.

Before that, Mr Ranjha ignored Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi’s plea to ask the protesters to leave the house so normal business could be taken up.

“There is so much noise and so much disturbance...that tear the eardrums,” Pakistan Muslim League Senator Mrs Tanveer Khalid complained about the opposition protest. “There is so much noise that I cannot talk,” said another Pakistan Muslim League senator, Ms Gulshan Saeed.

Ruling party chief whip Kamil Ali Agha said the opposition would pay for their present attitude in the 2007 general elections.