ISLAMABAD, March 1, 2022: The Balochistan Assembly witnessed introduction of two government bills on Tuesday which were referred to the relevant committees for further consideration, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

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

Members’ Participation

• The House met for 49 minutes.
• The sitting started at 03:44 pm against the scheduled time of 03:00 pm.
• The speaker presided over the sitting for 39 minutes while the remaining sitting was chaired by the deputy speaker.
• The leader of the house (chief minister) was not present.
• The opposition leader attended the entire sitting.
• As many as nine MPAs (14 percent) were present at the outset and 14 (22 percent) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of ANP, HDP, MMAP and PkMAP attended the proceedings.
• One out three minority lawmakers was present.

 Output

• Minister for local government withdrew the Balochistan Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2022 and announced to table it again after necessary amendments.
• The House referred two government bills to the relevant committees which were the Balochistan Forest Bill, 2022 and the Balochistan Charities Registration, Regulation and Facilitation (Amendment) Bill, 2022. Earlier, the House rejected the motions with majority vote for immediate consideration of the bills for passage after exempting rules.

.Representation and Responsiveness  

• The House neither observed question hour not took up a calling attention appearing on the agenda.

Order and Institutionalization

• A BAP lawmaker pointed out the quorum at 03:52 pm following which the chair ordered the bells to be rung till completion of quorum and the proceedings resumed at 04:06 pm.
• A lawmaker belonging to ANP walked out from the House at 04:19 pm for not including his resolution on the agenda. He did not return to the House till adjournment of sitting.
• Five lawmakers spoke on points of order for 21 minutes.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on Thursday, March 3, 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