LAHORE: The Punjab Assembly has been ranked at the bottom among the four provincial legislatures in a study conducted by a private research organisation about the working of the houses during the first parliamentary year (June 2013-May 2014).

The Sindh Assembly topped the comparative performance analysis with a score of 68 out of 100, followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (67), Balochistan (60) and Punjab with 58.

The study was carried out by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transpar­ency (Pildat) as part of its citizens’ assessment of legislatures with law making, timely formation of standing committees, working hours and days, attendance of chief ministers and leaders of opposition, budget session duration, punctuality, relations between the treasury and the opposition and assembly websites as the performance indicators.

On the law-making front, Sindh outdid the other three assemblies by passing 36 bills, followed by Punjab (31), KP (28) and Balochistan (25).

Interestingly, according to Pildat’s public opinion poll on the quality of democracy in the country, the highest net performance rating (NPR) given to any provincial assembly for its legislative performance was +22 per cent for the Balochistan Assembly, followed by Punjab (+5pc).

All the four assemblies delayed the formation of their standing committees – critical tools for legislative oversight of the executive. Punjab and KP took seven months to start the process, Balochistan eight and Sindh 10 months.

The Balochistan Assembly even failed to form the important public accounts committee. The province’s last assembly had no standing committee.

None of the provincial assemblies made any major reforms to improve the performance of the committees.

According to various public opinion surveys conducted last year, most people felt that there were four major critical issues – energy, inflation, unemployment and terrorism – being faced by the country.

The last analysis reveals that the legislatures failed not only to contribute constructively to policies to deal with these issues, but in some cases did not debate these problems even once during the year.

WORKING HOURS: The KP Assembly met for 243.22 working hours, Balochistan 142.38, Sindh 174.34 and Punjab 213.32 hours. In comparison with the average per day sitting of three hours of the four legislatures, the Scottish parliament meets for 5.30 hours.

CMS’ ATTENDANCE: Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif attended only eight of the total 70 sittings (11pc). Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik topped the list with 48pc attendance (26 out of 54 sittings), followed by Sindh CM Qaim Ali Shah with 47pc (27 of 57 sittings) and KP CM Pervez Khattak with 43pc (31 of 72 sittings).

Another year passed without any provincial legislature introducing the chief minister’s question hour. The international parliamentary tradition of question hour for the leader of the house has so far remained elusive for all the four assemblies.

BUDGET SESSION: Even though no substantial reform was introduced to increase the duration of budget discussions, the KP Assembly took the lead in terms of duration of the budget session. It spent 35 hours spread over nine actual working days on the matter.

The Sindh Assembly met for 32 hours over seven days, Punjab Assembly’s budget session lasted 21.42 hours over seven days, notwithstanding the fact that it is the largest house of the country and allowing every member to give his/her input required more time. The Balochistan Assembly met for 19 hours over six days to approve the budget.

PUNCTUALITY: It remained another important element of the working of the assemblies as none of them could start any sitting on time. The greatest delay was exhibited by the Punjab Assembly, with each of its sittings delayed by about two hours.

The least delay was exhibited by the Balochistan Assembly with an average of 1.24 hours. This again is in contrast to model parliamentary practices followed by the developed nations’ legislatures. For example, the proceedings of Scottish parliament start at 11.40am sharp and are over by 5.30pm.

RELATIONS: Relations between the treasury and opposition benches remained frayed as all the legislatures saw numerous walkouts. The greatest number of walkouts – 14 – was observed in Punjab and the lowest in Sindh – seven walkouts. KP saw 11 walkouts and Balochistan nine.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2014