NA Passes Bill to Increase Judges in IHC

ISLAMABAD, January 25, 2019: The National Assembly was prorogued sine die on Friday after passing the Islamabad High Court (Amendment) Bill, 2019, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet on Friday.

Following are key observations of the proceedings during the last (10^th) sitting of the seventh session:

Members’ Participation

• The Assembly met for an hour and 23 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1105 hours against the scheduled time of 1030 hours.
• The Speaker presided over the entire sitting while the Deputy Speaker did not attend the sitting.
• The Leaders of the House and the Opposition did not attend the sitting.
• As many as 66 lawmakers (19%) were present at the outset and 149 (44%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of BAP, GDA, PPPP and PML attended the sitting.
• As many as six out of 10 minority lawmakers were present.

Output  

• The Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs laid the Elections (Amendment) Ordinance, 2019 in the House.
• Moved by the Parliamentary Secretary for Law and Justice, the House passed the Islamabad High Court (Amendment) Bill, 2019 rejecting the amendments proposed by the lawmakers belonging to PPPP, PML-N and MMAP. The bill provides for increasing the number of judges in the Islamabad High Court from seven to ten.
• The House elected the Standing Committees through a motion and authorized the Speaker to name members of the committees.
• The House did not consider the Finance Supplementary (Second Amendment) Bill, 2019.

Order and Institutionalization

• A lawmaker spoke on a Point of Order (POs) consuming three minutes of the proceedings.
• A PPPP lawmaker pointed out the lack of quorum at 1123 hours that led to suspension of the proceedings for 32 minutes.
• The opposition lawmakers walked out from the proceedings at 1123 hours against the Chair’s decision to disallow POs. They returned to the House at 1159 hours.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and public.
•  Attendance of lawmakers was available to the media and observers.

This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the National Assembly’s proceedings, conducted by the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN). Errors and omissions are excepted.

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