ISLAMABAD, January 10, 2020: The National Assembly deferred question hour due to ministerial absence and passed six government bills including the Zainab Alert, Response and Recovery Bill 2019, observes Free and Fair Election Network in its Daily Factsheet on Friday.

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

Members’ Participation

• The National Assembly met for an hour and 38 minutes. The sitting started at 1107 hours against the scheduled time of 1100 hours.
• The Speaker chaired the entire sitting.
• The Deputy Speaker was not present.
• The Leaders of the House (Prime Minister) and the Opposition did not attend the sitting.
• As many as 34 (10%) members were present at the outset and 98 (29%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of BAP, JWP, PML and PPPP attended the sitting.
• Six out of 10 minority lawmakers were present.

Output

• Tabled by Minister for Human Rights, the House passed the Zainab Alert, Response and Recovery Bill 2019 and the ICT Rights of Persons with Disability Bill, 2018. The reports of the Standing Committee on these bills were presented in the previous sitting and the House passed a motion for immediate consideration of these bills and proceeded to the clause-by-clause consideration and subsequently to the passage of these bills.
• Moved by the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, the House passed a motion after consensus between treasury and opposition benches to withdraw the decision of National Assembly on November 7, 2019 about consideration and passage of six bills promulgated as Ordinances and later presented in the House. These bills were the Letters of Administration and Succession Certificates Bill, 2019; the Legal Aid and Justice Authority Bill, 2019; the Enforcement of Women’s Property Rights Bill, 2019; the Superior Courts (Court Dress and Mode of Address) Order (Repeal) Bill, 2019; the Benami Transaction (Prohibition) (Amendment) Bill, 2019 and the National Accountability (Amendment) Bill, 2019.
• Tabled by the Parliamentary Secretary for Law and Justice, the House passed four bills including the Letters of Administration and Succession Certificates Bill, 2019; the Legal Aid and Justice Authority Bill, 2019; the Enforcement of Women’s Property Rights Bill, 2019 and the Superior Courts (Court Dress and Mode of Address) Order (Repeal) Bill, 2019.  All these bills were passed after reports of the Standing Committee on Law and Justice about them.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House tool up two Calling Attention Notices (CANs) regarding electricity load shedding in district Karak and rise in the cases of child molestation and similar incident in Mansehra. These CANs were responded to by the Ministers for Energy and Human Rights respectively.
• The Chair deferred the question hour due to non-reply of questions related to Ministry of Interior and absence of Minister for Interior as well as representative from the relevant ministry in the House. The issue about non-reply of questions was raised by a PPPP lawmaker.
• A motion of thanks expressing gratitude to the President for his address to Parliament was not taken up.

 Order and Institutionalization

•  As many as five lawmakers including the Minister for Communications spoke on points of order for 28 minutes.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on January 13, 2020 (Monday) at 1600 hours.

Transparency

•  Orders of the Day was available to the legislators, observers and public.
•  Attendance of the lawmakers is available on the National Assembly’s website.

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