TOBA TEK SINGH, March 30: Police had to be summoned on Thursday to keep order in the district council meeting after a squabble between treasury and opposition benches which was followed by a brief scuffle between ruling group member Rana Zafar Iqbal and opposition member Shabbir Ahmad Nanha.
The police remained in the meeting hall, but no further untoward incident took place as opposition members walked out of the meeting in protest.
Opposition members Akbar Ali Warraich, Saeed Ahmad Saeedi and Afzal Yaqub were calling upon to declare minutes of the last district council meeting as bogus with the plea that the quorum was incomplete.
The registration of property transfer in Kamalia tehsil had been stopped without any reason for the last four years which was inflicting a loss of millions of rupees to the government in this tehsil.
This was complained by Kamalia union council nazim Abdul Rashid Gujjar in the meeting. He said that villagers were particularly facing hardships due to the ban on registration.
District council naib nazim and convener Chaudhry Sultan Ahmad assured the house that he would request the district nazim to talk to the DCO in this regard while a letter would also be written to the chief minister for this purpose.
Another member Chaudhry Shabbir Ahmad complained that the merit was violated by the Punjab Rural Support Programme (PRSP) in the recruitment of doctors at district council dispensaries.
He further said the record of the money collected under the head of ‘purchee fee’ was also not properly maintained in dispensaries by the PRSP staff.
The complainant was assured that the EDO (Health) would be asked to probe into the matter.
Meanwhile, the house approved setting up of a maternity centre at Chak 670-GB (Kamalia) on the demand of member Mehr Amanullah Hiraj.
Later, opposition members addressed a press conference in which they blamed the district naib nazim for running the house partially and unconstitutionally.
They claimed that after a walk-out by the opposition, the house had left with only 49 members making also the Thursday’s meeting illegal.
When contacted, District Naib Nazim Chaudhry Sultan Ahmad said the opposition was being used for his vested interests by former district nazim Chaudhry Muhammad Ashfaq.