Punjab Assembly turns into battlefield

LAHORE: The Punjab Assembly turned into a battlefield today when its members hurled chairs on each other while Speaker Rana Mohammed Iqbal suspended the membership of Sheikh Alla ud Din and Seemal Kamran until the current session of assembly concludes, Geo News reported on Thursday.

PML-Q MPA Seemal Kamran fell unconscious while protesting outside the Punjab Assembly as she was barred from entering the assembly.

The action was taken following the incident when Seemal Kamran threw a shoe at PML-Q’s (unification bloc) Sheikh Allauddin for passing vulgar comments against the female MPAs.

The Punjab Assembly session resumed from the point where it had ended on Wednesday when the assembly had turned into a fish market after members from the treasury and the opposition hurled shoes at one another and exchanged objectionable remarks which had to be expunged from the assembly proceedings.

The assembly witnessed the same ruckus even today when it resumed its session where members kept on pushing each other, uttered insolent comments and did not hesitate to throw chairs on each other.

The session was adjourned for fifteen minutes after the commotion worsened when women members of PML-N also got indulged in a fight. The opposition members, meanwhile, kept on chanting anti-government slogans.

Despite the Punjab Assembly warning, the opposition staged a walk out and didn’t participate in the assembly business and the treasury approved all the 43 demands for grant amid the opposition boycott on Wednesday.

The situation in the assembly got tense when Abdul Razzaq Dhillon, while responding to the protest of the opposition women members against the ruling party, passed remarks against Seemal Kamran, Majida Zaidi and other opposition members who had been active in the protest against the chief minister during his presence in the House the other day.

The situation worsened after Sheikh Alla ud Din – who had indulged in verbal duels with women members on a number of times during last four years, stood up on his seat and continued using objectionable remarks against the women members.

During his brief speech, he also termed the opposition women members ‘circus dancers’ who, he said, were not aware of their abode.

The remarks added fuel to fire and Alla ud Din became the focus of criticism by the opposition members. During the exchange of heated arguments, a woman member from the treasury benches threw a shoe towards opposition members. In retaliation, women member Seemal Kamran hurled a shoe at Alla ud Din but missed the target. Rather the shoe hit an elderly MPA from Sheikhupura sitting on the bench next to Sheikh.