• Session prorogued

ISLAMABAD, August 13, 2021: The Provincial Assembly of Punjab left most of its agenda unaddressed on Friday due to confrontation between treasury and opposition lawmakers, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during the 12th and last sitting of 34th session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for an hour and 43 minutes.
• The sitting started at 10:22 am against the scheduled time of 09:00 am.
• A member of panel of chairpersons presided over the entire sitting in the absence of speaker and deputy speaker.
• The leaders of the House (chief minister) and the opposition were absent.
• As many as 17 MPAs (five percent) were present at the outset and 107 (29 percent) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leader of PPPP attended the proceedings.
• Three out of eight minority lawmakers attended the sitting.

Output

• The House did not consider six private members’ resolutions and a statutory report.

Representation and Responsiveness 

• The House took up five out of 31 starred questions while lawmakers also asked six supplementary questions.
• Thirteen zero hour notices and nine calling attention notices remained unaddressed.

Order and Institutionalization

• Eight lawmakers spoke on points of order for 20 minutes.
• Lawmakers belonging to treasury benches protested for 11 minutes during the proceedings against remarks of PML-N lawmakers about their leadership. Following this protest, the Chair suspended the proceedings for 44 minutes.
• A PML-N lawmaker pointed out the quorum at 11:48 am but it was found complete upon counting.
• The Chair suspended the membership of two PML-N lawmaker for the same day’s sitting due to their remarks about PTI’s leadership and reportedly misconduct with the Minister for law during the proceedings.
• The session was prorogued sine die.

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