New seating arrangement being made in HoR

Kathmandu, November 14

The Parliament Secretariat has begun preparations for the new session of Parliament meeting at the International Convention Centre, New Baneshwor.

“Though it is up to the government to decide when to summon the House, we want to prepare for the new session of the Parliament,” Parliament Secretariat Spokesperson Rojnath Pandey said, adding, that the committees of the Parliament would start discussion on the bills from next week.

The Parliament Secretariat has started installing microphones on each table of the HoR hall. Until now, microphones had not been installed in each row.

According to Electronic Engineer Jeevan Adhikari, who is overseeing the arrangement at the Parliament, 396 seats will be installed in the 275-member HoR so that members of the Upper House could also sit during joint meeting of the Parliament. There are 59 lawmakers in the Upper House.

In the past, tables and microphones were available for only 180 members of the HoR due to which lawmakers had to pull microphones from other lawmakers’ tables and they also had to thump on the table to express support for any bill, motion or speeches delivered in the House. In the past, there were tables and microphones for those lawmakers who sat on the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth and eleventh rows, but there were no tables and microphones for those lawmakers who sat on the second, fourth, sixth, eighth and tenth rows. The Upper House, however, does not face such deficiency.

“Lawmakers complained about these deficiencies in the HoR several times in the past so we realised this was the right time to manage these things,” a secretary at the Parliament Secretariat said.

There will be three microphones for six lawmakers in each row which means lawmakers sitting in a particular row can pick up the microphones from the same table without having to pull microphones from front or rear tables. He said all the chairs will be joined so that no lawmaker can separate those chairs and no lawmaker can throw chairs in a fit of rage as happened in the past.

Inside the ICC hall, the Parliament Secretariat is also making new arrangements at the canteen. “There will be different places for lawmakers and for others in the canteen,” an employee of the Parliament Secretariat said, adding that lawmakers and their guards, including drives always sat at the same table in the Parliament canteen in the past, but from now, on there would be separate seating arrangement for others.

Adhikari said decoration and arrangements would be completed by December 6.