ISLAMABAD, February 14, 2022: The Senate transacted entire agenda and referred six private members’ bills to the relevant committees on Monday, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the proceedings during the 18th sitting of 317th session:

Members’ Participation

• The Senate met for four hours and 15 minutes; however, the proceedings remained suspended for ten minutes due to prayer break.
• The sitting started at 03:02 pm against the scheduled time of 03:00 pm.
• The chairman presided over the proceedings for three hours and three minutes while the remaining sitting was chaired by the deputy chairman.
• The leader of the house attended the entire sitting.
• The opposition leader was not present.
• As many as 18 lawmakers (18%) were present at the outset and 19 (19%) at the adjournment of sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of PTI, PPPP, PML-N, PkMAP, JI, NP, BAP, JUI-F and PML attended the sitting.
• All four minority lawmakers were present.

  Output

• The House witnessed introduction of six government bills which were the Limited Liability Partnership (Amendment) Bill, 2022; the Payment of Wages (Amendment) Bill, 2022; the Control of Narcotic Substances (Amendment) Bill, 2022; the Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2022] (Amendment of Article 61); the Access to the Media (Deaf and Dumb) Persons Bill, 2022 and the Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2022.
• The House passed the transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues (Amendment) Bill, 2021 which was jointly sponsored by an independent and a PTI lawmaker.
• A bill – the Islamabad Capital Territory Waqf Properties (Amendment) Bill, 2022 – was withdrawn by JI lawmaker.
• Six bills were withdrawn by their movers following the passage of as many motions under rule 115.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House passed eight motions under rule 194 (1) granting 60-day extension to standing committee on law and justice for presentation of reports on as many bills referred to it. Standing committee on communication was also given 60-day extension for presentation of report on a point of public importance..
• Twenty lawmakers spoke on points of public importance for an hour and three minutes.
• The House held debate on recent incident of heckling of a Muslim girl wearing hijab by RSS backed mob in the Indian State of Karnataka. Twenty-two lawmakers participated in debate that continued for two hours and 25 minutes.

Order and Institutionalization

• The House was adjourned to meet again on Thursday, February 17, 2022 at 10:30 am.

Transparency

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

This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the Senate proceedings conducted by Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN). Errors and omissions are excepted