ISLAMABAD, February 3, 2016: The Punjab Assembly took up its entire agenda and passed four government bills on Wednesday during fourth sitting of its 19^th session, says Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN).

Following are some key observations of the House proceeding:

Members’ Participation in House Proceedings

• The Punjab Assembly met for three hours and 33 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1100 hours against the scheduled time 1000 hours.
• The Deputy Speaker presided over the entire sitting as the Speaker was not present.
• The Chief Minister did not attend the sitting.
• The Leader of the Opposition attended the sitting for seven minutes.
• 10 MPAs (3%) were present at outset and 54 (15%) at adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leader of JI was present.
• Five minority members were present.

Output

• The Provincial Law Minister introduced the Punjab Animals Slaughter Control (Amendment) Bill 2016.
• The House passed four government bills with majority vote. These bills were also moved by the Law Minister and included the Punjab Revenue Authority (Amendment) Bill 2015, the Infrastructure Development Authority of the Punjab Bill 2015, the Punjab Food Authority (Amendment) Bill 2015 and the Punjab Pure Food (Amendment) Bill 2015.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The government orally responded to 12 out of 24 starred questions appearing on agenda while one question was deferred. The lawmakers also asked 23 supplementary questions.
• The House disposed of five adjournment motions while two were deferred for another sitting.

Order and Institutionalization

• The lawmakers spoke on 21 points of order consuming 29 minutes of the proceeding.
• Entire opposition staged a walk-out at 1211 hours against killing of two employees of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) in Karachi during a protest against privatization of PIA. The members returned to the House at 1246 hours.
• A PTI lawmaker pointed out the lacking quorum at 1325 hours. The Chair ordered to ring the bells for two minutes and quorum was found complete on recounting.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and public.
• The attendance of lawmakers was available to the media and observers.

To download the factsheet, click here for English version – click here for Urdu version

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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.