ISLAMABAD, January 11, 2016: The National Assembly took up its entire agenda except a Calling Attention Notice during seventh sitting of 28^th session on Monday, says Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN).

Following are some key observations of the House proceeding:

Members’ Participation in House Proceedings

• The National Assembly met for three hours and eight minutes.
• The House took a prayer break for 19 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1606 hours against its scheduled time of 1600 hours.
• The Speaker presided over the sitting for first 90 minutes while a member of the Panel of Chairpersons presided over the rest of the sitting.
• The Prime Minister was not present.
• The Leader of the Opposition attended the sitting for 40 minutes.
• Six Federal Ministers attended the sitting.
• 18 MNAs (5%) were present at outset and 47 (14%) at adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of PkMAP, PML-Z, QWP-S, JI, APML and AMLP were present.
• Six minority members were present.

Output

• The House passed the Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal (Amendment] Bill, 2015 moved by the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs. Four members including the mover discussed the bill for five minutes.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House took up 13 out of 31 starred questions appearing on the agenda. The members also asked 16 supplementary questions.
• Only 14 of 29 unstarred questions were replied.
• The Parliamentary Secretary for Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs, Statistics & Privatization gave statement on a Calling Attention Notice regarding hundreds of acres of land affected due to water logging and salinity.
• Three lawmakers spoke on motion of thanks about Presidential Address to joint session of the Parliament. The discussion consumed 45 minutes.

Order and Institutionalization

• Six lawmakers spoke on Points of Order consuming 18 minutes of the proceeding.
• The parliamentarians belonging to MQM staged a walk-out for 14 minutes to protest against the delay in transfer of powers to elected local government representatives.
• The members belonging to PPPP walked out at 1858 hours against nomination of a party’s lawmaker in a criminal case.
• A lawmaker of PPPP pointed out the quorum at 1914 hours which was found incomplete on counting leading to the adjournment of the sitting.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and public.
• The attendance of lawmakers is available on website of National Assembly.

 To download the factsheet, click here for English Version, click here for Urdu Version

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