PESHAWAR: Members of the treasury benches in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, including a cabinet member, on Friday came down heavily on the provincial government for ‘restricting’ development budget to five constituencies only.

They angrily rejected the provincial budget for financial year 2016-17 alleging it was meant only for the constituencies of Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, senior ministers Shahram Khan Tarakai and Inayatullah Khan, elementary and secondary education minister Mohammad Atif Khan and Speaker of the provincial Assembly Asad Qaisar.

“I respect the chief minister and other cabinet members but want to ask if only their constituencies are backward as most development schemes reflected in the budget are for them,” said adviser to the chief minister on population welfare Shakeel Ahmad on the second consecutive day of the budget debate.

Treasury members including CM adviser allege budgetary allocations limited to five constituencies

He said all residents of the province had an equal right to the resources of the province and therefore, the development funds should be distributed among them without discrimination.

The angry CM adviser said in the last three years of the provincial government, only four districts, including Nowshera, Swabi, Mardan and Upper Dir, were preferred to others during the distribution of funds.

He warned he would quit the cabinet if discrimination against the constituencies of other lawmakers didn’t stop in two months.

Amid the treasury MPA’s tirade, Speaker Asad Qaisar asked him why he didn’t raise the issue in the cabinet meetings.

“Mr. Speaker, I’m tired of raising the issue of discrimination in the cabinet meetings,” he replied.

Shakeel Ahmad said Rs16.131 billion had been allocated for Nowshera district in the budget and Rs2.792 billion for Swabi, but the faraway, backward districts of the province were ignored in an act of injustice with the local residents.

He said the major point of the PTI campaign for the 2013 general elections was the accountability of corrupt people and recovery of looted money from them but it was unfortunate that the top accountability bodies, including the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission and Anti-Corruption Establishment, had long been functioning without director general and director respectively.

Other PTI lawmakers, including Yaseen Khalil, Qurban Khan, Babar Saleem and Jamshed Khan, also requested the speaker time and again to allow them to say something about discrimination in the budget.

The speaker however declined prompting those lawmakers to stage a walkout in protest.

Yaseen Khalil tore off some budget documents before threw them up in the air.

The opposition members also joined them.

Earlier, ANP parliamentary leader Sardar Hussain Babak criticised the government for discrimination in the distribution of development funds. “Like us (opposition members), most of the treasury members, too, have reservations about the distribution of development schemes reflected in the provincial budget for 2016-17 but they are silent about it due to the pressure of the party (leadership),” he said.

The ANP leader said some influential people in the government used the province’s resources as their personnel property and that was why billions of rupees had gone to their constituencies.

He said the PTI-led provincial government had made history by introducing a huge cut of Rs29 billion on development funds in the outgoing financial year.

Sardar Hussain Babak also criticised the government for releasing Rs15 billion only to the districts from their share of Rs30 billion and said power hadn’t been devolved to the local bodies yet.

Sanaullah, Sardar Hussain and Fakhar Azam of the PPP, Mufti Fazl Ghafoor of the JUI-F and other lawmakers also participated in the budget debate.

The chair adjourned the session until Saturday.

Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2016