ISLAMABAD, October 1, 2021: The Punjab Assembly was prorogued sine die on Friday amidst a lack of quorum, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during the sixth and last sitting of 35th session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for 44 minutes.
• The sitting started at 11:05 am against the scheduled time of 09:00 am.
• A member of panel of chairpersons presided over the entire proceedings in the absence of speaker and deputy speaker.
• The leaders of the House (Chief Minister) and the opposition did not attend the sitting.
• As many as 32 MPAs (nine percent) were present at the outset and 35 (ten percent) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leader of PPPP attended the proceedings.
• One out of eight minority lawmakers attended the sitting.

 Representation and Responsiveness 

• The chair deferred and disposed of one question each during the question hour while the remaining 19 starred questions were not taken up during the proceedings.

Order and Institutionalization

• Three lawmakers spoke on points of order for 15 minutes regarding hike in price of petroleum products. Later, a PPPP lawmaker also staged token walkout on the same issue.
• A PML-N lawmaker pointed out the quorum at 11:27 am following which the Chair ordered the bells to be rung for five minutes. The quorum was found incomplete upon counting and the proceedings remained suspended for 16 minutes. On resumption of the proceedings at 11:48 am, the quorum was incomplete and the Chair announced to prorogue the session.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available on Assembly’s website.
• Information on Members’ attendance is available on Assembly’s website.

This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the Punjab Assembly proceedings conducted by SANGAT Development Foundation, a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are excepted