Balochistan budget passed without objections.

QUETTA -- The Balochistan Assembly has passed a Rs598 billion budget for the next fiscal year without facing any objection from either side of the aisle.

The session, which started one hour and 45 minutes behind schedule, was presided over by Deputy Speaker Sardar Babar Khan Musakhail.

Balochistan Finance Minister Sardar Abdul Rehman Khetran presented 102 demands for the draft in the house one by one. Of all, 60 demands for the draft of over Rs351.2bn belonged to non-development expenditure, while 42 demands for the draft of over Rs246.9bn were for the development programme.

Opposition members belonging to BNP-Mengal, JUI-F and PkMAP were present in the house when Sardar Khetran moved the demands for the draft, but none of them submitted any cut motion, which enables assembly members to oppose a specific allocation in budget proposals.

No cut motions presented in house for only second time in province's history

It was the second time in the Balochistan Assembly that no opposition member submitted a cut motion or opposed the demands for the draft after 1985, when military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq had conducted nationwide elections on a non-party basis and there was no opposition in the provincial assembly.

However, in yesterday's session, opposition members - who are coalition partners in the nine-party alliance government at the Centre - walked out of the assembly on the issue of power outages but later returned to the house.

Opposition members expressed their satisfaction with the budget presented by Mir Abdul Qudoos Bizenjo-led coalition government in the province and described it as a 'balanced document'. They acknowledged that uplift funds were allocated to all districts and no constituency was ignored in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for the next financial year.

The treasury benches also welcomed the development budget, which they said was based on the development of the entire province, whereas maximum development schemes identified by MPAs in their constituencies were included in the PSDP.

'People-friendly'

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