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Tuesday March 19, 2024

PA session prorogued indefinitely

By Asim Hussain
September 23, 2017

LAHORE :Lack of quorum continued to haunt Punjab Assembly throughout the 11 days of the recent session, from day one to the last day on Friday, when the House was prorogued sine die after the treasury benches failed to muster the required number of members, forcing the Speaker Rana Iqbal Khan to prorogue.

Earlier, Opposition members demanded that Justice Baqar Najafi Inquiry Commission report regarding Model Town killings should be tabled in the House since the Lahore High Court judge Mr Justice Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi had recently directed the government to make the report public. However, the Speaker refused to entertain the demand on the plea that the matter was sub judiced. Opposition’s Asif Mehmood and Arif Abbasi demanded that they should be allowed to table a resolution out of turn in the House to press the demand of tabling the commission report. But the Speaker also refused to entertain the demand for the same reason.

Speaker’s refusal irritated the opposition members who began to protest. They said the government had left no option for them since neither the report was being published nor the Opposition was allowed to exercise its Constitutional right to table a resolution in the House. Arif Abbasi said “we have nowhere to go, no door to knock in this situation.” He also complained that the government had been blocking adjournment motions from the Opposition members also. He indicated that one of his adjournment motions had been pending for over a year but was not being allowed to be presented in the House. With loud sloganeering, both Asif Mehmood and Arif Abbasi walked out of the House.

The Speaker had just called for taking up the remaining agenda and the House was barely starting to go through the adjournment motions when Opposition’s female member Naheed Naeem pointed out that the House was lacking quorum. The move brought an embarrassing situation for the treasury members who tried to bring in the required number of the members into the House. The Speaker ordered ringing of bells for several minutes but it looked certain that the quorum could not be maintained in the House. At last, the Speaker announced that the session was prorogued for indefinite period.

Earlier, during the question hour, the House discussed the questions pertaining to Specailised Healthcare and Medical Education departments. Parliamentary secretary Rana Afzal told the House that the government would fill up all the vacancies of gynaecologists in the hospitals in all the districts of the province and the basic health centres in rural areas by the end of this year in order to reduce the pressure on the hospitals in large cities.