New Delhi, April 6: Blaming the Congress for Parliamentary disruptions, Union Minister Ananth Kumar on Friday said ruling BJP MPs will sit on day-long fasts in their respective constituencies on April 12 to protest the washout of the second half of the budget session.

The Parliamentary Affairs Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader said it was for the first time that MPs of any party have foregone their salaries along with allowances because the two houses did not function.

"It is for the first time that both salaries and allowance have been foregone... but this is not the first time that Parliament has been disrupted... we have tried to raise the moral standard," he said.

The National Democratic Alliance MPs had announced they would forego salaries for 23 days due to the washout of the second half of the budget session due to opposition protests.

The budget session of Parliament started on January 29 and went into a break on February 9. The two houses met for the second half of the session on March 5, which concluded on Friday.

 

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ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.

“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.

The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.

Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.

There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.