ISLAMABAD, May 22, 2017: The Punjab Assembly could not address its legislative agenda due to lack of quorum on Monday, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN).
Following are some key observations of the House proceedings during second sitting of 29th session:
Members’ Participation
- The Punjab Assembly met for two hours and nine minutes.
- The sitting started at 1605 hours against the scheduled time 1400 hours.
- The Speaker presided over the entire sitting while the Deputy Speaker was not present.
- The Chief Minister did not attend the sitting.
- The Leader of the Opposition attended the sitting for 45 minutes.
- Fourteen MPAs (4%) were present at outset and 84 (22%) at adjournment of the sitting.
- The parliamentary leader of JI attended the sitting.
- Seven minority members were present.
Output
- The House did not take up ordinances and statutory reports appearing on the List of the Business.
- The Standing Committees on Home, Cooperatives and Communications presented their reports on matters referred to them by the House.
- The House also granted extension to the Standing Committees on Home and Cooperatives for presentation of two reports.
Representation and Responsiveness
- As many as eight out of 18 Starred Questions were responded to by the government during Question Hour while one question was disposed of and five were deferred. The lawmakers also asked 25 supplementary questions.
Order and Institutionalization
- The lawmakers spoke on two Points of Order consuming four minutes of the proceedings.
- An Independent lawmaker staged a token walkout over government’s unsatisfactory reply to a question.
- A PTI lawmaker pointed out quorum at 1721 hours which led to suspension of the proceedings for 35 minutes. However, the quorum was found incomplete on recount and the sitting was adjourned till Tuesday.
Transparency
- ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and public.
- Information on Members’ attendance is available on Punjab Assembly’s website.
The daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the Punjab Assembly proceedings conducted by PATTAN Development Organization – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are regretted.