Strong protest against bye-elections' violence and water shortage completely overshadowed the Karachi city council budget session proceedings on Tuesday.
The extremely charged council members, mainly belonging from Al-Khidmat and Awam Dost panels did not allow the house to debate over the draft budget and continued to focus on deploring the alleged rigging and violence in 12th May bye-elections.
They alleged Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) for unleashing a reign of terror in the wake of the elections and manipulating its results on full support from the provincial government.
They further accused MQM for making the polling staff hostage, casting fake votes, intimidating voters and target killings. The members, specially belonging to AL-Khidmat Group also hoisted placards inscribed with demand to apprehend the culprits of bye-elections' massacre and chanted anti-MQM/anti-government slogans.
They further alleged the provincial government for supporting MQM's negative activities to safeguard their regime. They pointed out that all the law-enforcement agencies including police and rangers openly supported MQM on the election day and did not take any action against their subversive activities.
They demanded immediate suspension of Sindh Governor and apprehension of the culprits who killed 11 people on 12th May.
The other major issue which remained the focus of the members' debate was shortage water in the city. They condemned the government for making a water allocation of 17.5 mgd from K-3 project for the proposed Textile City and contended that the project was basically aimed to overcome the water shortage of the city, rather than to provide water to any commercial project.
Siddique Rathore and Ghulam Akbar raised the pending issue of honorarium to UC Nazims and suggested that the council should not pass forthcoming unless their arrears were cleared. Responding to them, Engr. Abdul Aziz assured that the honorarium issue would be settled before the budget.
Earlier, presiding over the session, Muslim Pervez informed the house that the council finance committee had received 174 proposals to be incorporated in the draft budget till the deadline of 15th May, while another five more suggestions had been submitted after the set deadline.
He sought the house's approval for the inclusion of these delayed proposals into the list of remaining ones which was unanimously granted.
Others who also spoke on the floor were Habib Hasan, Shamim Mumtaz, Basharat Ali, Abdul Razzak, Kishwar Khanum, Jammun Darwan, Najmi Alam, Yousuf Naz, Noor Jhogio, Abdul Razzak Siddique, Mehrun Nissa and Ghulam Abbas Talpur.
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