Overview of 49^th Session of the National Assembly

The 49^th session of the National Assembly began on January 16 and was prorogued on February 9. Only seven (7) sittings were convened during the session spanning over 25 days. The schedule of the sittings during the session is given in Appendix A.

This 49^th Session of the National Assembly met for 8 hours and 24 minutes with an average time of 1 hour and 12 minutes per sitting. The longest sitting of the session was held on Wednesday, February 1 when the House was adjourned after meeting for 2 hours and 33 minutes. The shortest sitting was held on Thursday, February 9 when the House was adjourned due to lack of quorum after meeting for only 15 minutes.

The average delay in starting a sitting was 50 minutes during the session.

Earlier, the National Assembly was convened for only one (1) sitting as its 47^th Session on Tuesday, December 20. The sitting was held to pass two (2) bills which included: The Foreign Investment (Promotion and Protection) (Amendment) Act, 2022 to limit the scope of the law to the Reko Diq project in Balochistan and The Control of Narcotics Substances (Amendment) Bill, 2022 to provide for doing away with death penalty for drug smugglers and to replace it with life imprisonment. The 47^th session was prorogued after meeting for only 31 minutes. 

Only after one day’s gap, the 48^th Session was convened on Thursday, December 22, 2022, again only for a single sitting. This sitting was also held to only pass two (2) bills including The Federal Employees Benevolent Fund and Group Insurance (Amendment) Bill, 2022 and the Islamabad Capital Territory Local Govt (Amendment) Act, 2022. The ICT LG bill was passed to increase number of Union Councils (UCs) of Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) from 101 to 125 and provision of direct elections for the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor. The bill was not referred to any Standing Committee concerned and was passed hurriedly on the same day. 5 lawmakers spoke on the bill only for 11 minutes and objected on the passage of the bill just before a week of the scheduled local government elections in the ICT on December 31. The 48^th session was prorogued after meeting for only 38 minutes.

The 49^th session was held on Thursday, January 16 after a gap of 24 days.