ISLAMABAD, November 10, 2020: The Provincial Assembly of Punjab skipped entire Private Members’ business on Tuesday and adopted a supplementary resolution to condemn hateful comments of French President Emmanuel Macron about Islam, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daly Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during second sitting of 26^th session: 

Members’ Participation

• The House met for 59 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1631 hours against the scheduled time of 1400 hours.
• The Speaker presided over the entire sitting.
• The Deputy Speaker was not present.
• The Leaders of the House and Opposition did not attend the sitting.
• As many as 37 (9%) MPAs were present at the outset and 122 (33%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• Parliamentary leaders of PPPP and PRHP attended the proceedings.
• Three out of eight minority lawmakers attended the sitting.

Output

• Tabled by Provincial Minister for Law, the House adopted a resolution condemning blasphemous caricatures as well as French President Emmanuel Macron’s hateful comments against Islam.
• The House adopted another resolution demanding the federal government to fix rate of paddy crop at Rs.2300 per 40 kilogram. The resolution was sponsored by two lawmakers – one each belonging to PTI and PML-N.
• The House neither took up any of the Private Members’ business appearing on agenda nor observed question hour. The agenda included four Private Resolutions and a Private Member’s bill.

 Order and Institutionalization

• As many as three lawmakers spoke on points of order for 15 minutes.
• PML-N lawmakers protested for 14 minutes during the speech of Provincial Minister for Law on political issues.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on November 11, 2020 (Wednesday) at 1400 hours.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ is 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 SANGAT Development Foundation – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are regretted.