ISLAMABAD, June 26, 2021: The Balochistan Assembly concluded its budget session on Saturday after speech of Chief Minister in the absence of opposition, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during seventh and last sitting of the budget (40th) session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for two hours and 20 minutes.
• The sitting started at 12:35 pm against the scheduled time of 11:00 am.
• The speaker presided over the entire sitting.
• The deputy speaker was also present.
• The leader of the House (Chief Minister) attended the entire sitting.
• The opposition leader was not present.
• As many as 27 MPAs (42 percent) were present at the outset and 29 (45 percent) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of BNP-A, BAP and JWP attended the proceedings.
• As many as one out of three minority lawmakers was present.

 Output

• The Chief Minister spoke for two hours and five minutes on the matters related to boycott of the opposition during budget session, performance of provincial government, provincial budget and investigation into death of former PkMAP Senator Usman Kakar.
• Provincial Minister for Finance tabled the schedule of authorized expenditure 2021-2022 and supplementary schedule of authorized expenditure 2020-2021.

Order and Institutionalization

• All opposition members remained absent from the proceedings of the House.
• The session was prorogued sine die.

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