ISLAMABAD: The Punjab Minister for Local Government and Community Development, Abdul Aleem Khan, retracted the provincial administration’s earlier decision to celebrate Basant, a springtime kite festival, in February this year while interacting with the media in Lahore on Wednesday.

The minister noted it would take about six months to prepare for the festival, adding that the government would take strict action against individuals using chemical or glass-coated strings to fly kites in the province.

It may be recalled that the Punjab Information Minister, Fayazul Hasan Chohan, had said last December that the provincial government was planning to allow Basant festivities next year and was looking for viable proposals from different stakeholders to plan a safe festivity.

His announcement had elicited a sharp response from opposition parties as Jamaat-e-Islami’s Sirajul Haq had rebuked the government for “keeping people busy in kite flying” instead of finding “solutions to their problems,” and the two main opposition factions in the Punjab Assembly, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), had brought a resolution against the provincial administration’s decision, saying no festivity should be held at the cost of human lives.

Basant used to be celebrated with great fervor in the province of Punjab before it was banned by the authorities. The decision was taken since the festivity caused serious accidents, resulting in loss of lives in certain instances.

The accidents mostly happened since some kite-flyers used sharp metal strings that in instances slit the throats of bike drivers who got entangled in them. There were also incidents of aerial firing and, in some cases, people also fell from their rooftops while flying kites and were seriously injured.