Kathmandu, October 20

Speaker Onsari Gharti Magar postponed today’s meeting of the Legislature Parliament until Sunday after Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal requested her for the same stating that political parties wanted to buy time to come up with a common view on the issue of impeachment motion against Chief of Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority Lok Man Singh Karki, which was registered yesterday.

The motion, registered by 157 members of the CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre was scheduled to be tabled at today’s meeting and forwarded to the 11-member Impeachment Recommendation Committee that was formed yesterday, for further proceedings.

“The Speaker postponed the meeting by issuing notice after Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal telephoned her stating that political parties wanted to take one or two days to forge a common view on the issue of impeachment,” said Gharti’s press adviser Babin Sharma.

Gharti also cancelled her one weeklong Geneva visit scheduled to start from tomorrow as an important issue has been introduced in the Parliament, he said.

After the proposal is tabled on Sunday, the Speaker will determine the date and time for preliminary discussion and the House will decide about forwarding the proposal to the recommendation committee, according to assistant spokesperson of the Parliament Secretariat Sudarshan Kuinkel.

The committee is mandated to recommend to the full House after inquiring whether there exist grounds and reasons for moving a motion of impeachment against the accused, according to Article 101 (3) of the constitution.

The committee’s recommendation will then be discussed by the full House before putting the motion to vote. It needs two-thirds majority (396 votes) from the existing 595 members of the House for the motion to pass.

Meanwhile, the committee’s meeting today formed a four-member sub-committee to prepare its internal working procedures, according to committee member Gyanendra Bahadur Karki.

The four members include Dipak Kuinkel of Nepali Congress, Parbat Gurung of CPN-UML, Ram Narayan Bidari of CPN-Maoist Centre and Dilanath Giri of Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal.

The committee was chaired by seniormost member of the panel Kumari Laxmi Rai. The panel has been asked to submit its report on October 26.