ISLAMABAD, August 3, 2021: The Punjab Assembly deferred question hour and passed two government bills on Tuesday, says Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during the eighth sitting of 34th session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for 51 minutes.
• The sitting started at 04:15 pm against the scheduled time of 02:00 pm.
• The speaker presided over the entire sitting.
• The deputy speaker was not present
• The leaders of the House (Chief Minister) and the opposition did not attend the sitting.
• As many as 118 MPAs (32 percent) were present at the outset and 35 (nine percent) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leader of PRHP attended the proceedings.
• Two out of eight minority lawmakers attended the sitting.

 Output

• Moved by the PML lawmaker, the House passed two government bills including the Punjab Privileges (Amendment) Bill 2021 and the Qarshi University (Amendment) Bill 2021. The former bill was returned by the Governor under Article 116(2)(b) of the Constitution for re-consideration.

 Representation and Responsiveness 

• The House neither observed question hour nor considered zero hour notices.

Order and Institutionalization

• A PML-N lawmaker pointed out the quorum at 05:03 pm but it was ignored by the Chair.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on Friday, August 6, 2021 at 09:00 am.

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