ISLAMABAD, February 26, 2022: The Balochistan Assembly passed two government bills and adopted as many resolutions on Saturday, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during third sitting of 50th session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for an hour and 13 minutes.
• The sitting started at 04:36 pm against the scheduled time of 03:00 pm.
• The deputy speaker presided over the entire sitting in the absence of speaker.
• The leaders of the house (chief minister) and the opposition were not present.
• As many as six MPAs (nine percent) were present at the outset and eight (12 percent) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of MMAP and PkMAP attended the proceedings.
• One out three minority lawmakers was present.

 Output

• Moved by the Minister for education, the House passed two government bills including the Balochistan Traffic Engineering Bill, 2022 and the Balochistan Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill, 2022.
• The House adopted a resolution to condemn incident of heckling of a Muslim girl wearing hijab by RSS backed mob in the Indian State of Karnataka and demanded international community to take notice of human right violations in India. The resolution was sponsored by lawmakers belonging to BAP and MMAP.
• Sponsored by PkMAP and BNP-M lawmakers, the House adopted another resolution to express sorrow over the death of Baloch political leader Dr. Abul Hayee Baloch who passed away in a road accident a day earlier.

Representation and Responsiveness  

• Sponsored by a lawmaker belonging to HDP, the House took up a calling attention notice (CAN) inquiring about government steps to make it easier for people with disabilities to access government offices.
• Another CAN on the agenda was deferred.
• The House passed a motion to elect MPA Shakeela Naveed Noor Qazi as member of Pakistan Nursing Council as per Pakistan Nursing Council Act, 1973.

Order and Institutionalization

• Five lawmakers spoke on points of order for 14 minutes.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 03:00 pm.

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