Punjab Assembly Speaker suspends 26 opposition members

LAHORE: Speaker Punjab Assembly has suspended 26 opposition members of Punjab Assembly over “causing disturbance during the assembly proceedings”, ARY News reported on Saturday.

Speaker Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan has notified suspension of 26 lawmakers for the next 15 sittings owing to violation of decorum of the assembly.

The members suspended by the speaker included Malik Fahad Masood, Muhammad Tanvir Aslam, Syed Riffat Mehmood, Yasir Mehmood Qureshi, Kalimullah Khan, Muhammad Ansar Iqbal, Ali Asif, Zulfiqar Ali, Ahmed Mujtaba Chaudhry, Shahid Javed, Muhammad Ismail, Khayal Ahmed, Shehbaz Ahmed, Tayyab Rashid, Imtiaz Mehmood, Ali Imtiaz, Rashid Tufail, Murtaza Iqbal, Khalid Zubair, Ijaz Shafi, Saima Kanwal, Muhammad Naeem, Sajjad Ahmed, Rana Aurangzeb, Shoaib Mir and Usama Asghar Ali Gujjar.

“It is our democratic right to protest,” PTI MPA Mian Ijaz Shafi, one of the suspended legislators, has said.

“We have been suspended on the direction of Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz,” Ijaz Shafi claimed. “We won’t be silenced at any cost,” PTI MPA said.