Daily Times

LAHORE: Treasury members have not paid heed to the warnings of PML-N’s Chief Whip Rana Arshad about taking serious action against absentee legislators. The Punjab Assembly session was once again adjourned by the lack of quorum on Friday.

The session lasted for just 18 minutes before the lack of quorum was pointed out and the rest of the agenda remained unheard. The Punjab Assembly session on Friday started one hour and 46 minutes late under the chair of Deputy Speaker Sardar Sher Ali Gorchani. The House started Question Hour discussing the Forestry, Wildlife & Fisheries departments and Parliamentary Secretary Mian Fida Hussain Wattoo was present to answer the supplementary queries from his colleagues in the House.

At the beginning of the Question Hour, the first three questions were disposed of by the Deputy Speaker as all three movers of such questions, Lt Col (Retd) Sardar Muhammad Ayub Khan, Bao Akhtar Ali and Chaudhry Ashraf Ali Insari were not present in the House and the Chair also did not allow any other legislator for treasury or the opposition to hold a supplementary question in this regard.

Meanwhile, Sardar Shahab ud Din of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) from the opposition benches stood on his seat and raised objection that his questions related to the Forest, Wildlife & Fishers departments were not entertained in the question hours. He also raised objections on the absence of ministers from the House.

On this, Deputy Speaker said that he would investigate why his questions were not being included in the question hour. Meanwhile, a vocal treasury member Azma Bukhari stood on a point of order and endorsed the claim of the opposition member Sardar Shahab for not accommodating her questions in the question hour by the assembly secretariat administration.

She demanded the Chair that all the system of the assembly secretariat working would be computerised so that they (legislators) would be informed the reasons of rejection of their public interest question from the assembly secretariat. Pakistan Muslim League Quaid (PML-Q) female legislator Khadija Umar Farooqi also stood on a point of order and launched a complaint to the Chair that the tenure of the sitting PML-N government was going to be ended but she was not adjusted in any standing committee for the last three years.

Later, the opposition member on independent seat Ahsan Raiz Fatiyana stood on a point of order, saying that treasury members, especially the ministers and parliamentary secretaries had no interest in the assembly proceedings so he pointed out the quorum. At that time only 43 members were present in the House. Resultantly, the House was adjourned by the Chair till next Monday afternoon.