CM Elahi escapes PA session as opposition calls for trust vote.

LAHORE -- A complete bedlam was witnessed in the Punjab Assembly on the second consecutive day as the treasury ignored calls from the opposition to prove majority in the House by asking the chief minister to seek a confidence vote from the assembly. In a repeat of their strategy Monday's strategy, the opposition members chanted slogans and created noise by desk thumping when the speaker did not listen to them and took up the Question Hour, the first item on the day's agenda. They also tore apart copies of the agenda as they pressed for their demand that chief minister Parvez Elahi should take a vote of confidence as advised by the governor. Parvez Elahi escaped the Assembly session on the second consecutive day and did not obtain the trust vote as directed by the governor. The opposition lawmakers raised slogans against Parvez Elahi and called him a dakoo (robber). PML-N's Rana Mashhood censured the treasury for passing 21 bills without taking any input from the concerned standing committees which had been left incomplete by the speaker.

He also protested that copies of the draft bills were also not circulated among the lawmakers on Monday in violation of the rules. He also complained that the speaker did not give him floor yesterday when he cried hoarse demanding to conduct voting on the bills. He pleaded that it was the constitutional responsibility of the chief minister to seek a trust vote from the assembly on the directions of the governor. He insisted that Parvez Elahi should abide by the governor's order to prove majority in the house. During the assembly proceedings, a PTI MPA Zaheer Abbas Khokhar staged a walkout from the house in protest against the presence of Federal Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan in the visitors' gallery.

Also, the driver of PTI MPA Raja Rashid Hafeez hurled a shoe at the vehicle of Rana Sanaullah when the latter was about to leave the assembly. The shoe hit the windscreen of the minister's official vehicle. Earlier, the assembly's security staff tried to stop the official vehicle of Attaullah Tarar, but the PML-N MPAs forcibly opened the gate. Tarar later challenged that the federal ministers could not be stopped from visiting provincial elected houses under the law. In a related development, the PML-N submitted a resolution in the assembly secretariat demanding that a neutral member instead of the speaker or deputy speaker should chair the proceedings when the chief minister would take a vote of confidence...