Ali Bhai Kamran
ISLAMABAD
The Senate adopted four Private Members’ resolutions and witnessed introduction of six bills on Monday, observes Free and Fair Election Network in its Daily Factsheet. Following are key observations of Senate proceedings during 2nd sitting of its 260th session.
The Senate met for four hours and 57 minutes. The sitting began one minute behind the scheduled time of 1500 hours. The House observed the prayer break of 17 minutes.
The Chairman presided over the entire sitting. Deputy Chairman did not attend the sitting. The Leader of the House attended the entire sitting while the Leader of the Opposition was present for an hour and 19 minutes.
The Prime Minister did not attend the sitting. Parliamentary leaders of PPPP, PkMAP, MQM, NP, PML-F, PTI, PML, ANP and JUI-F attended the sitting. Twenty (19% of the total membership – 104) lawmakers were present at the start and 17 (16%) at the adjournment of sitting.
The House adopted four resolutions; two of them condemned the attacks on mosques in Canada and the United States.
Another resolution regarding establishment of more hospitals in Islamabad was deferred.The House witnessed presentation of three reports on the Public Private Partnership Authority Bill, 2016; the Pakistan National Accreditation Council Bill, 2016 and the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology Bill, 2016.
The report on the National Accountability (Amendment) Bill, 2017 was deferred till the opinion of the Minister for Law on it.
The House witnessed presentation of six bills, including the Pakistan Penal Code (Amendment) Bill, 2017 (Amendment of Section 323); the Pakistan Penal Code (Amendment) Bill, 2017 (Amendment of sections 273, 274 and 275); the Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2017 (Amendment of Article 101); the Code of Civil Procedure (Amendment) Bill, 2017 (Amendment of sections 80 and 82); the Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2017 (Amendment of Article 37) and the Medical and Dental Council (Amendment) Bill, 2017. All these bills were referred to the relevant committees for further deliberation.
Two bills – the Islamabad National Hospital Bill, 2017 and the Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2017 (Amendment of Article 70) – were deferred.
Two more bills appearing on the agenda under Rule 100 were deferred on the request of the mover. These bills included the Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2016 (Omission of Article 182), the Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2016 (Amendment of Article 209) and two third majority in the House required to pass any constitutional amendment bill.
