ISLAMABAD, June 14: In a unique show of unanimity of views, both treasury and opposition members in the Senate on Saturday criticised the government for continuing the legacy of bringing “irrelevant” legal amendments through the Finance Bill, including increasing the number of Supreme Court judges.

The Leader of the House, Mian Raza Rabbani, said: “In my opinion 12 of the 26 proposed amendments in the bill have no relevance to finance. Twelve are related to financial matters while 80 per cent of two legislative pieces were partially related to finance.”

He said that such legislation should have been avoided through the bill.

The upper house of the parliament started a debate on the Finance Bill 2008 contained in the budget statement under Article 73 of the Constitution.

Earlier, in the absence of the Leader of Opposition, Kamil Ali Agha, Anwar Bhinder of the PML-Q initiated the debate and condemned what he called a strange tendency of introducing irrelevant amendments through the Finance Bill. The Senate is expected to complete the general debate on budget on Monday by continuing it on Sunday. It will continue the debate on Tuesday and Wednesday after the house finance committee finalises recommendations on the issue.

Mr Rabbani also criticised the increase in allocations for the presidency and said he had proposed the removal of the president’s name from article 50 which made him part of parliament.

Terming the budget “lacklustre and unimaginative”, Wasim Sajjad said it offered no relief to the poor people and would lead to increase in food prices. He said the coalition government had failed to resolve issues of unemployment and price hike.

He said that education and food security should be considered as fundamental rights in constitutional amendments. He criticised Ishaq Dar of the PML-N for painting a dismal picture of the economy which had caused the depreciation of the rupee against the dollar and discouraged foreign investors.

He said the government should encourage the agro-based industry and added that instead of scrapping the Kalabagh dam, it should try to create consensus on the project.

He said that in order to resolve the judges’ issue, the constitutional package related to judges might be de-linked from the rest of the package.

Mr Bhinder said the government’s move of incorporating legislative pieces in the Finance Bill was a clear breach of the privilege of the Senate, which was thus bypassed, adding that he would move a privilege motion against it.

Deploring the government for holding no pre-budget session of the National Assembly and Senate, he said the elected representatives had been deprived of giving their input in the process.

Kamran Murtaza of the MMA urged the government to resolve the financial problems of Balochistan. He regretted that the government had not taken any initiative regarding the National Finance Commission in the budget to fulfil the constitutional requirements. He called for resolving issues between the centre and the provinces.

He said the 20 per cent increase in salary of government employees would provide little relief to low-grade employees.

Saadia Abbasi of the PML-N criticised the increase in GST and said the measure would lead to an increase in prices of essential food items.

She said the government should ask the US for enhancing its assistance in the war on terror.

Senator Khalid Ranjha said that about 22 of 26 laws in the Finance Bill contradicted its definition. He said that making no allocation for strengthening the judicial system had exposed the sincerity of the government to provide people with cheaper and quicker justice.

Criticising the increase in the number of Supreme Court judges, he said it would be justified if the number of family, civil, session and high courts judges had also been increased.

Senator Dr Mohammed Saeed of the Jamaat-i-Islami urged the government to abolish sales tax and customs duty on food items.

He described the imposition of fixed tax on sale of real estate as ‘unreasonable’ and demanded that the Federal Bureau of Statistics should be privatised to avoid any future fudging of figures.

Prof Ibrahim of the JI proposed a 50 per cent cut in salary of the president, prime minister, ministers and lawmakers to cope with budgetary constraints.