Members sans corona test won't attend NA budget session: Naveed Qamar

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party MNA Naveed Qamar has said that the National Assembly members who didn’t underwent coronavirus test would be denied entry in the house session, ARY News reported on Wednesday.

Talking to media, PPP lawmaker said that those members diagnosed coronavirus positive will not attend the house session.

Only 86 members of the house will attend the budget session and every party in the house has been informed the number of lawmakers from that party will attend the session, Naveed Qamar said.

“The house will not vote over the cut motions and the budget will be passed before June 30,” he said.

Parliament’s budget session being held under the shadow of coronavirus pandemic would restrict the debate on the budget.

It is to be mentioned here that to ensure social distancing extra seats have been removed from the Parliament House.

Earlier, ruling and opposition parties in the lower house had agreed on a formula to hold the budget session of the National Assembly through participation of only 86 lawmakers – the minimum number required to maintain NA quorum – in order to stop the spread of contagious coronavirus disease.

According to the understanding, 46 lawmakers from the ruling PTI and its allies will attend the budget session while the rest of 40 lawmakers will be from opposition parties.

Of the 46 legislators of the ruling alliance, 39 will belong to the PTI. Two lawmakers from the MQM and one lawmaker each from PML-Q, BNP, AML, JWP and BAP will participate in the session.

The opposition party members to attend the budget session will comprise 21 lawmakers from the PML-N, 14 from the PPP, 4 from the MMA and 1 from the ANP.

During the parliamentary session, all standard operating procedures (SOPs) with regard to prevention of the Covid-19 pandemic, including social distancing norm will also be adopted.

This was decided in a meeting of the parliamentary leaders in the National Assembly chaired by Speaker Asad Qaiser at the Parliament House.

The participants of the meeting held consultations for the upcoming session of budget with precautionary measures against COVID-19.

Later, the dialogues between the federal government and opposition parties became successful as the opposition leader agreed the demand to hold debate on five points in the Parliament.

It is agreed to hold debate on sugar and wheat crisis, coronavirus, locust attacks and other important issues, whereas, question hour and attention notices are suspended in the session.