Kathmandu, March 16

The Parliamentary Regulation Committee today decided to discuss the report on Parliamentary Regulations submitted by PRC Sub-committee Chair Ram Narayan Bidari, a Unified CPN-Maoist lawmaker.

Nepali Congress lawmaker Radheshyam Adhikari, who heads the PRC, said the panel would discuss the report clause-wise for next three-four days.

The Parliament has not been able to conduct hearing for 11 newly nominated Supreme Court justices due to lack of Parliamentary Hearing Committee, which can be formed only after Parliamentary Regulations are enacted.

Adhikari said he told the PRC members to thoroughly look into the report and determine how many proposed provisions were functional and how many were non-functional.

He said he also told the lawmakers that if they deemed any issue, including the formation of PHC, contentious, they could consult their party leadership in order to reach a solution.

He said his panel had planned to enact new Parliamentary Regulations two and a half months ago, but it could not do so due to Nepali Congress’s 13th General Convention that made NC lawmakers busy throughout the process.

“It’s primarily our job to forge consensus on the contents of the Parliamentary Regulations, but there is no harm in consulting the top leaders of the party that have representation in the panel, if it fails to forge consensus on any particular issue,” he added.

Bidari told THT that the draft regulations proposed to form a 15-member Parliamentary Hearing Committee and one representation to a political party that has at least 10 lawmakers in the Parliament.

Bidari also said his report suggested that the PHC should confirm or reject nominations within two months.

The report also states that if there was no consensus, the decision should be made on the basis of two thirds majority of the PHC.

Bidari accused the NC of delaying the enactment of Parliamentary Regulations.

He said parties should not repeat their past mistakes and if they found that they could not easily forge consensus on any particular issue, then they should narrow their differences by forming their own committees to hold negotiations between different parties.

“Parties should understand that they may be in opposition today but tomorrow they may be in power. So they should not haggle over the number of PHC members,” he said and added that as per the new constitution there had to be 15 members in the PHS.

NC and the ruling parties differed in the past over the number of representatives in the PHS, with the NC demanding to have 73-75 members as was the case under the Interim Constitution and the ruling parties, particularly the CPN-UML, pressing to go for 15-member PHS, as per the provisions of the new constitution.

The report submitted by Bidari also suggested to form two panels: one to expedite impeachment process and the other to oversee implementation of the new constitution.

The Supreme Court had, on Monday, issued an interim order in the name of the Speaker and the Parliament Secretariat, telling them to do the needful to conduct Parliamentary hearing for the 11 newly nominated Supreme Court justices.

The Judicial Council yesterday re-sent the names of the newly nominated justices to Parliament Secretariat requesting it to conduct hearings.