Murree incident has shocked the nation. The Punjab Assembly took up the matter after it deferred the question hour session. More in this report.

ISLAMABAD, January 21, 2022: The Punjab Assembly deferred question hour on Friday and discussed Murree incident and farmers issues especially availability of fertilizers to them, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) it its daily factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during the first and last sitting of the 39th session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for an hour and nine minutes.
• The sitting started at 04:33 pm against the scheduled time of 03:00 pm.
• The speaker chaired the entire sitting.
• The deputy speaker was not present.
• The leader of the house (chief minister) was not present.
• The opposition leader attended the sitting for 20 minutes.
• As many as 56 MPAs (15%) were present at the outset and 38 (10%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• Parliamentary leaders of all political parties were absent.
• Four out of eight minority lawmakers attended the sitting.

 Representation and Responsiveness

• The Chair deferred the question hour and zero hour notices.
• Three lawmakers including the opposition leader and the Minister for law debated Murree incident and availability of fertilizers to farmers. They spoke for 40 minutes on both issues.

Order and Institutionalization

• A lawmaker spoke on a point of order for one minute.
• PML-N lawmakers walked out from the House at 05:09 pm for not broadcasting the speech of the opposition leader live on official media.
• The session was prorogued sine die.

 Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was not available on Punjab Assembly’s website.
• Information on Members’ attendance is available on Punjab Assembly’s website.

The daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the Punjab Assembly proceedings conducted by SANGAT Development Organization – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are regretted