ISLAMABAD, February 24, 2020: The Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) passed four government bills and adopted a motion to dissolve the existing standing committees of the House, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet on Monday.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during fourth sitting of the 11^th session:

Members’ Participation

• The Assembly met for 45 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1510 hours against the scheduled time of 1400 hours.
• The Speaker presided over the entire sitting while the Deputy Speaker was also present.
• The Leaders of the House and the Opposition did not attend the sitting.
• As many as 40 (27%) legislators were present at the start and 65 (45%) at the end of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of ANP, PML-N, MMAP, PPPP and BAP attended the sitting.
• All four minority members were present in the sitting.

Output

• The House passed four government bills including the KP Finance (Amendment) Bill, 2020, the Galiyat Development Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2020, the KP Universities (Second Amendment) Bill, 2020” and the KP Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2020. All these bills were moved by Provincial Minister for Information.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House did not address the questions and Call Attention Notices included in the agenda due to the absence of the movers.
• The Chair referred a Privilege Motion of a PTI lawmaker to the Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures and Privileges.
• The House approved a BAP lawmaker’s motion seeking to reconstitute the Assembly’s standing committees in order to include the members elected from the newly-merged districts in the committees.

Order and Institutionalization

• The opposition protesting during the proceedings for 11 minutes against the government’s attitude towards the business of the House.
• The Chair adjourned the House till February 25, 2020 (Tuesday) at 1400 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 KP Assembly proceeding conducted by United Rural Development Organization (URDO) – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are excepted