ISLAMABAD, March 30, 2019: The Balochistan Assembly elected the members of 19 Standing Committees and passed the Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2019, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet on Saturday.

Following are key observations of the House proceeding during third sitting of the 10^th session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for two hours and one minute.
• The sitting started at 1242 hours against the scheduled time of 1100 hours.
• The Speaker presided over the entire sitting.
• The Deputy Speaker was also present.
• The Leader of the House did not attend the sitting.
• The Leader of the Opposition attended the entire sitting.
• As many as 28 MPAs (48%) were present at the outset while 11 (17%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of ANP, BNP, PkMAP, PTI and MMAP attended the proceeding.
• As many as two out of three minority lawmakers attended the sitting.

Output

• Moved by the Minister for Local Government, the House passed the Balochistan Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2019. It was aimed at fresh delimitation of wards of Metropolitan Corporation Quetta after extension of its limits to four Union Councils (UCs) of District Council Quetta and revising the population range provided for UC in the Balochistan Local Government Act, 2010.
• Three other legislative proposals appearing on the agenda were not taken up by the House.
• The House adopted three motions to elect the members of 19 Standing Committees.

 Order and Institutionalization

• As many 12 lawmakers spoke on points of order for an hour and 19 minutes.
• An MMAP lawmaker pointed out the quorum at 1442 hours but it was ignored by the Chair.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on April 2, 2019 (Tuesday) 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