ISLAMABAD, September 20, 2016: Starting 34 minutes behind the scheduled time, the second sitting of 21st session of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly was adjourned due to lack of quorum, says Free and Fair Election Network on Tuesday.
The sitting began at 1534 hours against the scheduled time of 1500 hours with 30 lawmakers (24%) present at the start and 21 (17%) at the time of adjournment.
Following are some key observations of the Assembly proceedings:
Members’ Participation
- The KP Assembly met for 61 minutes.
- The sitting started at 1534 hours against the scheduled time of 1500 hours.
- Thirty lawmakers (24%) were present at the start and 21 (17%) at the end of the sitting. A maximum of 42 members (34%) were observed to be present at one point of the sitting.
- Deputy Speaker presided over the entire sitting.
- The Chief Minister and the Opposition Leader did not attend the sitting.
- Parliamentary leaders of PPPP and JI were present.
- Two minority members attended the sitting.
- Fifteen members applied for leave.
Output
- The House passed two bills including the KP Taking Over of the Industrial Estates or Economic Zones Bill, 2016 and the KP Adhoc Employees of Directorate of Information Technology (Regularization of Services) Bill, 2016.
- The House witnessed introduction of the KP Public Private Partnership (Amendment) Bill.
- A report of Standing Committee on Revenue was adopted by the House.
Representation and Responsiveness
- Six out of 13 Starred Questions appearing on the agenda were answered by the relevant departments. In addition, lawmakers also raised two Supplementary Questions.
- The House did not take up two Calling Attention Notices (CANs) on the agenda. The first CAN was dropped due to the absence of relevant minister while the other CAN was deferred over the absence of mover.
Order and Institutionalization
- A PTI lawmaker pointed out the quorum at 1633 hours following which the Chair ordered for the bells to be rung for two minutes. Upon counting, less than 25 percent of the lawmakers were found to be present in the House, which led to the adjournment of the sitting till Friday.
Transparency
- ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and other stakeholders.
- The attendance of lawmakers was not available to the observers and media.
This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the KP Assembly proceeding conducted by United Rural Development Organization (URDO) – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are excepted