Farewell NA session from July 18

ISLAMABAD: The farewell session of the National Assembly will be devoted to legislation and it would undertake record legislation in its final sitting.

It is likely that the session that would be summoned on July 18th (Tuesday) would continue for 25 days before being adjourned sine die in the second week of next month. Highly placed parliamentary sources told The News here Friday that the National Assembly will have no session for three days during Ashura.

This last year of the National Assembly would also be the first parliamentary year of its tenure when the house wouldn’t adopt a resolution for expressing a vote of thanks to the President for his address to the joint sitting of two houses of Parliament.

President Arif Alvi, who will be quitting office in the second week of September, delivered his speech to the joint sitting of the two houses of Parliament in September last. Alvi wasn’t heard by the members with interest due to his partisan attitude.

Later the National Assembly, while castigating the President, suggested ‘No’ to the vote of thanks by some members and since then the resolution is pending on the agenda.

Chairman Senate Sadiq Sanjrani will assume as acting President immediately upon the expiry of the mandated tenure of the incumbent president in September. Highly placed sources said that Leader of the House in the National Assembly Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Leader of Opposition Raja Riaz Ahmad will have a meeting next week to designate a caretaker prime minister. It would be an informal engagement as the two will later have formal consultations before the final announcement on the issue.

The Speaker National Assembly, Raja Pervez Ashraf, according to sources, has planned to constitute a committee headed by Federal Minister for Law and Justice Senator Azam Nazir Tarar to give final shape to a commemorative session of the National Assembly.

According to sources, the former members of the House belonging to the PTI who had to quit the House due to the decision of their chairman but now have parted ways from the party have expressed interest in taking part in the farewell session of the national legislature. The House will adopt a few resolutions before packing for good, the sources added.