ISLAMABAD, December 26, 2019: The Provincial Assembly of Punjab took up entire agenda appearing on its List of Business on Thursday, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during sixth sitting of the 17^th session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for two hours and 25 minutes, however, the sitting remained suspended for 31 minutes due to prayer break.
• The sitting started at 1619 hours against the scheduled time of 1500 hours.
• The Speaker presided over the sitting for an hour and three minutes while rest of the sitting was chaired by the Deputy Speaker.
• The Leaders of the House and the Opposition did not attend the sitting.
• As many as 37(10%) MPAs were present at the outset and 32(9%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• None of the parliamentary leaders attended the proceedings.
• Two out of eight minority lawmakers attended the sitting.

Output

• The Minister for Law presented the Audit Report on the Accounts of Expenditure of Government of Punjab for the Audit Year 2017-18 which was referred to the Public Accounts Committee.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House took up ten out of 20 starred questions appearing on the list while the lawmakers asked 15 supplementary questions.
• The government answered two out of six Adjournment Motions (AM) appearing on agenda. An AM of a PML-N lawmaker regarding the role of police during Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC) incident was referred to the Special Committee for in-camera briefing while the Chair deferred another three motions on agenda.

Order and Institutionalization

• As many as 14 lawmakers spoke on 20 Points of Order consuming 31 minutes of the proceedings.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on December 27, 2019 (Friday) at 0900 hours.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available on Assembly’s website.
• Information on Members’ attendance is available on the Assembly’s website.

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