- Punjab Assembly Heavy on Legislation, Light on Public Importance Issues
- Low attendance of lawmakers keeps haunting Provincial Assembly
The 23rd session of the Punjab Assembly remained productive in terms of legislation but it completely ignored the public importance issues highlighted by the lawmakers. The House transacted a heavy legislative agenda amidst the absence of the Leader of the House (Chief Minister) who did not attend any sitting of the session.
The legislation comprised 14 Government and two Private Members’ Bills, including five ordinances which were promulgated during last two months when the Assembly was not in session. However, a number of Adjournment Motions, Calling Attention Notices and Zero Hour Notices were still pending when the session was prorogued on September 2, 2016.
Leader of the House (Chief Minister) did not attend any of the sittings
Besides making recommendations to the government on public issues, the House adopted a number of resolutions to express its opinion on various happenings, including incidents of terrorism and anti-Pakistan rhetoric of Altaf Hussain and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the backdrop of reported increase in child abductions, the government also arranged a general discussion on law and order where the Law Minister put the crime statistics before the lawmakers. The Opposition was also given the opportunity to respond to the government claims.
Duration and Attendance
Every sitting of 23rd session started well behind the scheduled time. The minimum delay in the commencement of the proceedings was 56 minutes while the maximum one hour and 57 minutes. On average, every sitting began an hour and 19 minutes late and continued for two hours and 16 minutes. The cumulative duration of the 10-sitting session was 22 hours and 42 minutes.
The attendance trends were also not very encouraging as only 20 members were present at the outset and 48 at the adjournment of a sitting, on average. The Leader of the House remained absent throughout the session while the Leader of the Opposition attended nine out of 10 sittings and remained present in 60% of the proceedings’ cumulative duration. The entire proceedings were presided over by the Speaker except for an hour and 21 minutes when a member of the Panel of Chairpersons presided over the sitting. The Deputy Speaker was present in three sittings but did not chair any of them. The Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) member was the most regular among all parliamentary leaders, who attended six sittings followed by PPPP and PML-Z leaders who attended two and one sittings respectively.
Legislation
The Punjab Assembly passed five government bills during the session, while 11 legislative proposals (five ordinances, four government bills and two private members’ bills) were referred to the relevant standing committees following their introduction.
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