PA lacks quorum

LAHORE

Punjab Assembly Speaker Rana Iqbal Ahmad Khan adjourned the proceedings for the third day on Friday without taking up any official or unofficial business due to lack of quorum as the members continued display of extreme irresponsibility and disregard towards attending the House, their prime job after getting elected.

The proceedings were adjourned shortly after the question hour when PTI member Ahmad Shah Khagga drew chair’s attention towards the fact that hardly 40 members were present in the House. The Speaker ordered ringing of bells but it proved of no use and he adjourned the proceedings for Monday.

Earlier, during the question hour regarding the Colonies department, Speaker Rana Iqbal took strong notice that the department had displayed an extreme irresponsibility towards timely provision of answers of the queries by the members.

The situation became very interesting after it turned out that out of 11 questions in total, the department failed to provide the replies of eight while the movers of the rest of three questions were not present in the House.

The Speaker directed the standing committee concerned to hold an inquiry of the unnecessary delay in the supply of replies and the names of those responsible for this gross malfunctioning, and present the report within two months. The House took the adjournment motions by the members, including Chaudhry Muhammad Iqbal, Khadija Umar, Basma Chaudhry, Ahmad Shah Khagga, Naheed Naeem, Sadia Suhail Rana and Amjad Ali Javed, and referred them to the committees concerned. A privilege motion by Munawar Ahmad Gill was also sent to the privilege committee.