ISLAMABAD: The government on Mon­day failed to ensure quorum in the National Assembly for the sixth straight day, forcing the chair to adjourn the sitting without taking up any agenda item, except a shortened Question Hour, as the opposition termed lack of interest in the proceedings by the treasury members an expression of no-confidence in the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Amjid Ali Khan, who was presiding over the sitting in the absence of both the speaker and the deputy speaker, adjourned the session till Tuesday afternoon (today) after a headcount when Ehsanur Rehman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) pointed out lack of quorum as the house assembled again after a Maghrib prayers break.

Leader of the Opposition and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Shehbaz Sharif entered the house amid desk-thumping but he was still busy in exchanging greetings with the members when the chair suspended the proceedings for 20 minutes for prayers break.

The quorum has been haunting the Natio­nal Assembly for quite some time, but since the start of the fourth parliamentary year last month, the issue has now become serious and acquired the form of a chronic problem. Interestingly, there has been no official word so far either from the speaker or the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) over the issue despite constant criticism from the opp­o­­sition as well as from outside over the government’s failure to ensure quorum in the as­­sembly for which the presence of 86 members, one-fourth of the 342-member house, is required.

Govt fails to ensure presence of minimum number of members for sixth straight day

Although it was the sixth sitting affected by the quorum, in fact the National Assembly had met for 11 days in the current parliamentary year as the two sandwiched days betwe­­en the sittings are also counted as the session days.

Many political and constitutional experts believe that pointing out quorum during the routine discussion and Question Hour is a misuse of the constitutional provision as quorum can only be pointed out during voting on some important issue. According to them, the spirit of this provision is to ensure maximum participation of members while doing legislation as Article 55(1) says that “all decisions of the National Assembly shall be taken by majority of the members present and voting”.

Soon after the adjournment of the sitting, Abdul Qadir Patel of the PPP issued a statement criticising the government over its failure to maintain quorum for the sixth day.

“The failure of the government to complete quorum is a matter of embarrassment for Prime Minister Imran Khan. It is an expression [by the treasury members] of no-confidence in the leadership of the prime minister,” he said.

Mr Patel said that it seemed that the ruling party members were unable to defend the “corruption” at the government level. He as­­ked the prime minister to “quit power” which was the only “respectable way” for him.

Earlier, during the Question Hour, Minister for Aviation Ghulam Sarwar Khan declared on the floor of the house that the restrictions on Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) by the European Union (EU) would be lifted by the end of the year.

Responding to a supplementary question by Naz Baloch of the PPP, the minister informed the house that a team of EU aviation experts was scheduled to visit Pakistan from November 15 to 29 to conduct an audit and physically inspect the evidence which Pakistan had provided them to show that it had addressed most of the EU’s concerns.

In response to another question, Mr Khan told the assembly that at present PIA had 30 airworthy aircraft for which there were 345 pilots.

Meanwhile, in a written reply to a question by Mahreen Razzaq Bhutto, the government said that 21.9 per cent of the country’s population was living below the poverty line as per the latest poverty headcount based on 2018-19 Household Integrated Economic Survey data.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2021