Parliament’s joint session rescheduled for April 18

President Asif Ali Zardari is scheduled to deliver the opening address at the inaugural session of both houses of the parliament on Thursday, marking the beginning of the parliamentary year following the general elections held on February 8. The session will be convened by President Zardari under Articles 54 (1) and 56 (3) of the Constitution. He will address the joint session under Article 56(3) which will begin at 4pm. Earlier, the joint session was convened on April 16 which has now been rescheduled for April 18. Hence, the notification for the joint parliamentary session on April 16 stands cancelled. It should be noted that this will be the first joint session following the start of the new parliamentary year in the country after both the upper and lower houses have its members elected constitutionally. Despite elections taking place on February 8 and former president Arif Alvi still in office, he was unable to summon a joint session as elections in the Senate were yet to be conducted. President Zardari, weeks after his oath of the president’s office and the successful conduct of Senate polls, has called the joint session. Previously, Alvi had summoned a joint session of the parliament on October 6, 2022 — months after a coalition government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was governing the centre. However, the then-president had called the session to mark the beginning of the last parliamentary year of the then-national Assembly in 2022. In his address to the parliament — marred by an unannounced boycott by the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and Jamiat Ulema-e-islam Fazl (JUI-F) — former president had stressed the need for dialogue and urged to end polarisation amid the country’s growing political instability, “Polarisation doesn’t end with stubbornness,” he had remarked. During the ex-president’s speech, the audience consisted of only 15 lawmakers initially, which later decreased to 12.