National Assembly of Pakistan

The National Assembly of Pakistan is the popularly elected lower chamber of the federal parliament, the Majlis-e-Shoora, established under Article 50 of the Constitution of 1973, which vests the legislature in the President and two Houses—the National Assembly and the Senate. Its composition is fixed by Article 51: following the Twenty-Fifth Amendment (2018) that merged the Federally Administered Tribal Areas into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Assembly comprises 336 seats—272 general seats filled by direct election, 60 seats reserved for women, and 10 reserved for non-Muslims, the latter two filled by proportional representation based on party strength. Members are elected for a term of five years under Article 52 from single-member constituencies on a first-past-the-post basis, with the franchise governed by Article 51(2) granting the vote to citizens aged eighteen and above. The qualifications and disqualifications of members are set out in Articles 62 and 63, the former famously requiring candidates to be sadiq and ameen (truthful and honest).

The Assembly is presided over by a Speaker and Deputy Speaker elected from among its members under Article 53. Its central constitutional function is legislation: under Article 73, Money Bills can originate only in the National Assembly, giving it exclusive control over taxation and public expenditure, and the federal Budget (the Annual Budget Statement) is laid before it under Article 80. The Assembly alone elects and can remove the Prime Minister, who under Article 91 must command the confidence of a majority of its members; a vote of no-confidence is moved under Article 95. It shares ordinary law-making with the Senate, but in cases of deadlock a bill is decided in a joint sitting under Article 70. The Assembly also participates in the election of the President (Article 41) and in the impeachment process under Article 47.

In contemporary practice, the present body is the 16th National Assembly, constituted after the general election of 8 February 2024, with Shehbaz Sharif elected Prime Minister and Ayaz Sadiq elected Speaker. Pakistan's parliamentary history records repeated disruptions—dissolutions under the now-curtailed Article 58(2)(b), the suspensions during the martial-law regimes of Ayub Khan, Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf, and the controversial dissolution of April 2022 preceding the no-confidence removal of Imran Khan, later reversed by the Supreme Court. The Eighteenth Amendment (2010) strengthened the Assembly by clipping presidential discretion and entrenching parliamentary supremacy.

For the CSS Pakistan Affairs paper, the National Assembly is a high-frequency topic. Examiners test the precise composition and seat allocation post-2018, the distinction between Money Bills and ordinary bills, the no-confidence mechanism under Article 95, and the Assembly's relationship with the Senate and the federal executive. Comparative questions often contrast the National Assembly with the Senate (Article 59) in powers and tenure, while constitutional-law questions probe Articles 62–63 and the impact of the Eighteenth Amendment. Candidates should memorise the article numbers and the 336-seat figure precisely, as factual accuracy is decisive in this section.