The newly elected Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf served as Federal Minister for almost 36 months of his 51-month tenure as the Member of the 13th National Assembly. Between March 2008 and February 2011, he held the portfolio of Minister of Water and Power. He made a comeback to the federal cabinet in April 2012 as Minister for Information Technology. Between the two tenures as Federal Minister, he acted as a Member for almost 15 months.
Raja’s performance as Federal Minister for Water and Power has been tainted by failures to overcome the power shortfall that continued to aggravate even after he was replaced. His actions and responses inside and outside the National Assembly have not been translated into actions. Against the backdrop of power outages, he became one of the top five sought after ministers in the National Assembly, though he could not respond to as many as 40 percent of the questions put to his Ministry.
Similarly, he responded to 29 of 45 Calling Attention Notices addressed to Ministry of Water and Power. Most assurances given to the House in response to these CANS, however, remain unfulfilled. His legislative role also remained limited as he only peddled two government bills for the approval of the House.
However, Raja’s performance as Federal Minister for Information Technology is confined to only two questions and one CAN addressed to him over a period of few days. Similarly, Raja did not contribute to the assembly proceedings when he was not holding any ministerial position.
