Ruckus at NA session:Treasury, Opp benches trade barbs over Ghotki train accident.

ISLAMABAD: In a heated debate in National Assembly (NA) on Monday over Ghotki train accident which claimed over 50 lives and around 100 injured,the treasury and opposition lawmakers kept levelling allegations on each other, for the incident.

The NA session resumed under the chairmanship of Deputy Speaker Qasim Khan Suri. The chair, after announcing the point of order in the house, gave the floor to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Ahsan Iqbal. The Pml-n leader began his speech by condoling the incident while saying that "it's a big national tragedy."

Iqbal, lamenting the government, said that instead of making some comprehensive measures to avert such incidents in the country, the incumbent is merely putting the blame game on the previous government.

"When development of Pakistan Railway would be cut down from Rs 43Billion annul to Rs 16 Billion annual, how is it possible to improve Railway overall," he questioned, adding that occurrence of such incidents is not much surprising.

Other lawmakers including Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Mohsin Dawar, Amin Ul Haq, federal ministers Fawad Chaudhry and Murad Saeed also expressed their condolences over the incident.

Opposition members demanded the government to inform the house on whether the investigation is made to determine responsibility for the regrettable incident.

But, when the speaker called upon Federal Minister for information Fawad Chaudhry to clarify the treasury position, he resorted to criticising the opposition, particularly PML-N. The answer was already being expected by the opposition from treasury benches, Chauhdry said and noted that "all such incidents occurred due to bad performance of the PML-N government which did not upgrade the railway system".

Soon after he lashed out at the previous government's policies, opposition members from both PML-N and PPP began protesting. The house echoed by the slogans and ruckus due to which the minister's speech was inaudible from the galleries.

Opposition members, mainly, demanded to seek an accurate answer over the said incident instead of diverting the debate to unnecessary criticism. They asked the speaker to disrupt Chaudhry, however, the speaker paid no heed to the opposition's demands and let Chaudhry continue his speech.

During one hour and 10 minutes of the noisy speech of the Information Minister, the opposition continued to chant slogans against and shouted at the government.

Chaudhry informed the house about the...