PESHAWAR: The adjournment of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly`s session without taking up the agenda owing to incomplete quorum has become a permanent feature of the august house.

In the previous 10 sittings of the current session of the assembly, three sittings were adjourned owing to lack of quorum at the cost of public issues scheduled to be discussed on the noorofthe house and huge public money utilised on running the assembly affairs.

The attendance of the lawmakers, both from the treasury and opposition benches, remained thin in the sixmonth long session of the assembly.

On Monday, the assembly session was adjourned within four minutes without discussing a single item on the agenda.

Only six lawmalcers of the 124-member house, including two men and four women, were present in the assembly hall. PTI lawmaker Najma Shaheen drew the attention of Speaker Asad Qaiser towards the lack of quorum soon after the recitation of the Holy Quran.

The speaker ordered the assembly staff to ring the bells for two minutes but none of the lawmakers turned up. He adjourned the session till May 19.

On April 7, the opposition`s walkout left the quorum in the house incomplete which led to the adjournment of the session without completing the agenda. The opposition members had walked out to protest 25 per cent local government`s fund utilisation on the discretion of its minister across the province.

Similarly, on April 13, the assembly business continued only for 14 minutes, which was adjourned due to lack of quorum without entertaining a single item on the agenda.

The scheduled time of the assembly session was 2pm but it started at 3:46pm and concluded at 4pm. Only six lawmakers were present on that day, two on the treasury and four on the opposition benches.

In the previous session held on Friday, the quorum was incomplete from the beginning as only 20 lawmakers were present while it required 31 MPAs which is one fourth of the of the total strength of the house. The proceeding formally started after more than one hour ringing of the bill.

The lawmakers from the opposition benches have raised the issue of thin attendance and incomplete quorum time and again, but in vain.

Most of the questions on the agendas in the previous sessions of the assembly got lapsed in the absence of the movers or ministers concerned, lawmakers told Dawn. Submitting a question with the assembly secretariat and the preparation of its reply by the government department concerned often took months, they said.

The photocopies of the questions and answers distributed among the lawmakers and journalists also cost huge public money. In the absence of the movers of such questions from the house, the entire process proves a futile exercise as such questions are lapsed.

JUI-F lawmaker Syed Mufti Janan, in one of the previous sessions, requested the speaker to issue ruling to the government to ensure quorum and presence of ministers. `We are here to raise problems of the masses but there is no minister to listen,` he said.

Information Minister Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani, when contacted, said that actually the lawmal(ers were busy in the upcoming local government elections.

Asked why the session was not prorogue d if the lawmakers were not taking interest init,he said thatthe government wanted to fulfil the constitutional requirement of 100 days of the assembly in session in the parliamentary year. The ongoing session would continue till May 30, the minister said.