LAHORE: IGP Shoaib Dastagir on Tuesday called on the Speaker and members of the grievance committee at the Punjab Assembly and promised to “take care of all complaints” of the parliamentarians.

The IGP was directed to visit the House after police reportedly stopped Deputy Speaker Dost Muhammad Mazari’s staff from entering the chief minister’s house a day earlier. The House took it as a breach of privilege and summoned the IGP to “explain behaviour of his department.”

The deputy speaker told the House that “the IGP accepted the fault on part of his department and offered the committee (formed by the Speaker a day earlier) to decide the matter and its decision would be implemented in letter and spirit.”

The House Committee also took up earlier matters where police reportedly misbehaved with Ali Haider Gilani and Tahir Sindhu as well. Mr Gilani had launched complaints against a superintendent of police for misbehaving and Tahir Sindhu alleged that police during a raid to detect liquor sale trespassed on the houses of Christians at Faisalabad and damaged the religious symbols. This despite the fact that all those sellers had valid permits.

All those issues were taken up with the IGP who promised to look into these complaints and ensure there was no repeat of any such incident.

Malik Nadeem Kamran, member of the Opposition on the committee, said the IGP was told in no uncertain terms that all members of parliament were equivalent to Grade-22 officers and also enjoyed mandate of hundreds of thousands of people. “Insulting behaviour with them cannot be tolerated and the IG agreed,” he added.

The deputy speaker, on his part, thanked the House for standing behind him for saving the dignity of the House.

Speaker Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi promised to strengthen the House committees, especially the one looking after the privileges of parliamentarians, and asked their chairmen to pull their socks up. He said any decision on the privilege case would be made after viewing the video footages.

The House, which lacked the numerical strength to continue proceedings right from the word go, was able to continue as no one pointed quorum out. Otherwise, it could have fallen within first few minutes. But the common cause of privilege carried the day.

Earlier, responding to a motion asking for more institutions for heart patients, Punjab Health Minister Yasmin Rashid said such institutions were already working at Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan, Wazirabad and Rawalpindi. “These specialised institutions are in addition to heart wards in almost teaching hospitals and district headquarters hospitals,” she said.

“It is not to say that it is sufficient for the entire provincial population. The government, depending on its ability to spare funds, plans to add heart institutions at the district level to further facilitate people,” she said.

The House was also informed that the Punjab government had already instructed the administrations at the district level to remove “road studs and cat’s eyes” that were damaging tyres and had already run out of vogue the world over. Punjab would soon be cleared of the menace, he assured the House.

The House was adjourned for Wednesday afternoon as it completed agenda for the day.

Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2020