The Presidency has rejected the National Assembly’s request to uphold its ‘privilege’ to deny public access to the attendance record of its members.
The National Assembly Secretariat had made the plea in October 2013 after the Federal Ombudsman upheld the right of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) to seek the record which the Secretariat had denied to the think tank, claiming that sharing the information will “breach the privilege of MNAs”.
However, the director legal of the President’s Secretariat rejected the contention. It noted that the attendance records of MNAs are “not private or personal in nature” but are “in public domain”.
“It will not be democratic to deny this information to the people,” said the order dated July 6.
In its plea to the Presidency, the National Assembly Secretariat cited the Articles 66, 67 of the constitution about the MNAs’ privileges and their rights to frame rules for the conduct of their business in the House. In its July 6 order, the President Secretariat held that Article 66 primarily gives immunity and privileges to a parliamentarian for speeches on the floor of the House and that Article 67 pertains to framing the Rules of Procedure with regard to proceedings in the House.
“Rules 28 and 283 of the Assembly Rules do not apply at all in view of Article 19-A of the Constitution of Pakistan, which significantly supplements the Information Law,” it observed.
Moreover, it said the other reasons for not accepting the stance of the National Assembly Secretariat are that “it is a matter of record that proceedings of the National Assembly is televised on electronic media” and Rule 282 of the Assembly Rule 2007 also requires the secretary of the National Assembly Secretariat “to prepare a full report of the proceedings at each of the sittings and to publish the same, meaning thereby, that all the information available with documents and record maintained at the Agency [National Assembly Secretariat] is not confidential and secret”.
