Questions unanswered: Legislative session fails to attract lawmakers

Most questions on agenda deferred or disposed of owing to lack of legislators.

LAHORE: Most questions on agenda of the Punjab Assembly session on the fifth day were disposed of owing to the unavailability of lawmakers from both the treasury and opposition benches on Friday.

Some questions answered by Parliamentary Secretary Malik Muhammad Ali Khokhar were not satisfactory as Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal Khan also expressed the same.

The interest of the government benches was evident as the lawmakers failed to show up in required numbers inside the House despite over 140 of them in attendance, keeping up with their tradition of escaping after marking attendance. The opposition benches neither demanded the PM’s resignation in the wake of the Supreme Court’s verdict over Panamagate nor shouted slogans against anyone but focused on pointing out the lack of quorum.

As the House started proceedings on 10:15am, PTI lawmaker Dr Murad Rass pointed out the quorum, which was again pointed out by an independent opposition member Ehsan Raiz Fatyana.

The session was prorogued for an indefinite period.

Around 27 questions related to primary and secondary healthcare were on agenda while 11 of them were deferred and eight were disposed of. One legislator was sick and had requested the speaker to defer their question to some other day.

Only one question was referred to the committee concerned while satisfactory answers were given to only two questions by the department. The rest were given answers by the parliamentary secretary Malik Muhammad Ali Khokhar, who seemed confused over responding to the questions of lawmakers.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 29^th, 2017.