ISLAMABAD, December 31, 2019: The Provincial Assembly of Punjab left most of the agenda unaddressed during Private Members’ day, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet on Tuesday.
Following are key observations of the House proceedings during last (ninth) sitting of the 17th session:
Members’ Participation
- The House met for an hour and 13 minutes.
- The sitting started at 1615 hours against the scheduled time of 1500 hours.
- A Member of Panel of Chairpersons presided over the entire sitting in absence of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker.
- The Leaders of the House and the Opposition did not attend the sitting.
- As many as 47 (13%) MPAs were present at the outset and 68 (18%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
- The parliamentary leader of PPPP attended the proceedings.
- Four out of eight minority lawmakers attended the sitting.
Output
- Moved by Minister for Minerals and Mines, the House unanimously adopted a supplementary resolution demanding the federal government for introduction of an automatic filtration and checking system to stop sharing of blasphemous content through social media.
- The House did not take up six resolutions appearing on the agenda while three were deferred and one was rejected through majority vote.
Representation and Responsiveness
- The House took up six out of 13 starred questions appearing on the list while the lawmakers asked 17 supplementary questions.
Order and Institutionalization
- Seven lawmakers spoke on as many Points of Order consuming 16 minutes of the proceedings.
- PTI lawmakers protested for three minutes during the proceedings over controversial remarks of a PML-N lawmaker against their leadership.
- The session was prorogued sine die.
Transparency
- ‘Orders of the Day’ was available on Assembly’s website.
- Information on Members’ attendance is available on the 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