PTI legislators’ rumpus forces Senate chairman to prorogue session

ISLAMABAD (APP) - The rumpus made by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) legislators on Friday forced Senate Chairman Muhammad Sadiq Sanjrani to prorogue the session for an indefinite period.

After recitation of verses from the Holy Quran, Opposition Leader in the Senate Dr Shahzad Waseem raised the issue of Dr Shahbaz Gill who is under trial due to unethical statement against the security forces of the country.

He alleged that Dr Gill was being tortured in the police custody inhumanly and he was not being provided level playing field to plead his case in accordance with the law and constitution of the state.

He said the PTI was in favour of fair trial of Dr Gill but against the basic human rights violations to whom he was being deprived.

When the Senate chairman gave the floor to Minister for Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman to comment on the reservations of the opposition leader, the PTI legislators started making hullaballoo on the floor of Upper House of the parliament with one voice.

Despite of all this fuss, she rose her chair and declined the allegations leveled by the opposition leader of torture to Dr Gill. Sherry said the medical report had been submitted in court and there were no spots of torture found on any part of his body.

She was of the view that if Dr Gill had been tortured or manhandled in the police custody, it should be investigated through proper channel instead of creating undue hype in the House.

She said Dr Gill had been awarded remand of two days while in the PTI tenure, the then opposition leaders who were booked under fabricated cases were put on remand for 90 days. She clarified that the incumbent government did not believe in victimization’s politics although in the PTI’s regime, they had tortured many opposition leaders mercilessly and put them behind the bars for years on the basis of accusations.

Sherry termed the PTI the most fascist party of the country as its leader was consistently appealing the ‘neutrals’ to intervene in the current political spectrum of the country.

Meanwhile, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Murtaza Javed Abbasi said the PTI legislators should not spoil the decorum of the House and behave responsibly at the supreme forum of the country.

He said the PTI legislators could not come out of mental agony of the regime change till date, due to which, they wanted to upset the environment of the house after damaging the national economy in their tenure.

Abbasi said their protest was based on false propaganda because there were no signs of torture in the medical report of Dr Gill. He said the opposition members were forgetting the days when they were making false cases against his leaders including Minister for Interior Rana Sanaullah, PML-N vice-president Maryam Nawaz, former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Minister for Planning and Development Prof Ahsan Iqbal and many more.

Despite repeated warnings from the chair, the PTI legislators did not bother and kept on making uproar in the House; therefore, the Senate chairman prorogued the session for an indefinite period.