Islamabad : The National Assembly, which opened its new session on Monday, is scheduled to hold only three sittings, spanning a maximum of seven hours, every week but its members will get the full sanctioned allowances and other facilities for the entire week with big financial repercussions.
The fewer and shortened sessions have been planned in view of the fast-spreading Covid-19 virus and its severe third wave. Additionally, the National Assembly does not have any significant agenda to dispose of. Despite an alarming spike in coronavirus infections, the session has been convened to meet the shortfall in constitutionally required sittings.
The continuing government-opposition tussle has prevented parliament from executing any worthwhile legislative business or hold even a productive debate on primary national issues. The discussion has always boiled down to mud-slinging and name-calling. Never before has any National Assembly been so ineffective in executing legislative business as the incumbent House has been. The most meaningful legislation that it has done in the last three years has been the passage of the national budgets.
Since its establishment as a result of the 2018 general elections, the National Assembly has approved no consensus legislation sponsored by either the government or opposition. It has mostly remained a forum that makes a lot of noise but produces little of substance. Whenever the treasury benches have attempted to pass any law, they have been forced to bulldoze it through the Lower House of Parliament on the force of its majority, given the non-cooperation by the opposition. The opposition is never taken on board in law-making, which results in further confrontation between the two sides.
This year too, the Lower House of Parliament will not be able to have its mandatory sittings of130 working days. Until now, it has held 53 sittings and faces a shortfall of 77 sittings, former Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq told The News.
He said the sittings have been planned for Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, with short durations of hardly two hours per day. Until August, the National Assembly is required to have 130 working days in the ongoing parliamentary year.
Under Article 54, the National Assembly will meet for not less than 130 working days in each year. Working days include any day on which there is a joint sitting and any period, not exceeding two days, for which the assembly is adjourned.
It is obligatory to have at least three sessions every year. Not more than 120 days will intervene between the last sitting of the assembly in one session and the date appointed for its first sitting in the next session.
The president may, from time to time, summon the National Assembly and the Senate or both in a joint sitting to meet at such time and place as he thinks fit and may also prorogue the same. On a requisition signed by not less than one-fourth of the total membership of the National Assembly, the speaker will summon the assembly to meet, at such time and place as he thinks fit, within 14 days of the receipt of the request; and when the speaker has summoned it only he may prorogue it.
