ISLAMABAD, October 23, 2020: The Provincial Assembly of Balochistan was adjourned on Friday amid lack of quorum, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its daily factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during second sitting of 28^th session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for an hour and 36 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1734 hours against the scheduled time of 1400 hours.
• Speaker presided over the entire sitting while the Deputy Speaker was also present.
• The Leader of the House (Chief Minister) did not attend the sitting while the Leader of Opposition was present.
• As many as 14 (21%) MPAs were present at the outset and 7 (11%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• Parliamentary leaders of MMAP, PkMAP, HDP, BNP-M, ANP and PTI attended the proceedings.
• All three minority lawmaker were absent.

Output

• Four resolutions appearing on the agenda remained unaddressed due to early adjournment of sitting over lack of quorum.

 Representation and Responsiveness

• The House took up seven out of eight questions while one question was deferred.
• Moved by a PkMAP lawmaker, the House admitted an Adjournment Motion (AM) for discussion which was about abduction of a businessman and an office bearer of Awami National Party.
• Provincial Minister for Education responded to a Calling Attention Notice regarding elimination of admission quota for students of Balochistan in Punjab’s universities. Another CAN was deferred by the House due to absence of relevant minister.

 Order and Institutionalization

• Two lawmakers spoke on a Point of Order for six minutes.
• A BNP-M lawmaker pointed out lack of quorum which resulted adjournment of the sitting.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on October 26, 2020 (M0nday) at 1600 hours.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and others.
• The attendance of lawmakers was not available to the observers and media.

 

This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the Balochistan Assembly proceedings conducted by Center for Peace and Development (CPD) – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are excepted