MUZAFFARGARH, Nov 10: District Nazim Qayyum Jatoi on Saturday failed to show majority in the district council budget session that concluded on a note of dissent.

The session was held under the chair of the Multan district and sessions judge on the orders of the Lahore High Court’s Multan bench. As many as 124 union council nazims attended the session which first elected the convener, but the district nazim boycotted and walked out of the hall with his 33 nazim-supporters.

Jatoi said he had staged boycott because the house already had a convener and there was no need to have a new one. In their absence, PML UC nazim Allah Dad Khar was elected convener of the council with 91 votes and when he took the chair, Jatoi and his supporters came back to the hall.

Khar asked Jatoi to present the budget, but he refused to do so saying he had sent the budget copy for approval to the EDO (finance) who had yet to return the document. The convener then turned to the PML group to do the job and Mian Muhammad Husain presented the budget prepared by the DCO and his team.

The details of the budget were not given, but only development schemes of Rs2 million for each nazim were passed.

Nazim Akram Chandia asked the convener to make some changes to the budget and give more funds to the UC nazims. Khar constituted a 13-member committee to prepare complete budget that is scheduled to be presented on Nov 20 — a date for which the convener called the session.

Jatoi later told a press conference that he would pass his own budget on Nov 20 as, he alleged, the government had hijacked union council nazims before the session. He said on Nov 20 the convener would be Ali Raza Shamsi and he would preside over the session. Shamsi was suspended by the LHC on a petition filed by Jatoi against him. Jatoi said he would withdraw the plea.

Shamsi was not available for comment.