Kathmandu, April 29

Speaker Onsari Gharti today met Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba and sought his help to end the deadlock over new Parliamentary Regulations.

The speaker’s move comes in the wake of prolonged deadlock in the   Parliamentary Regulations Drafting Committee over some key provisions of the proposed draft of Parliamentary Regulations.

Differences between the ruling and the opposition parties over the strength of Parliamentary Hearing Committee and the issue of whether the confirmation or rejection should be decided through simple majority or two thirds majority have led to unnecessary delay in the formulation of Parliamentary Regulations.

Delay in the formulation of Parliamentary Regulations has affected the Parliamentary hearing for newly nominated Supreme Court justices and ambassadors.

Speaker Gharti’s press adviser Babin Sharma said the speaker told Deuba that top leaders of the political parties represented in the Parliament should play their role in ending the deadlock over new Parliamentary Regulations.

She also told Deuba that she had met the chiefs of other two big parties (CPN-UML and Unified CPN-Maoist) separately and now she wanted to bring all three parties together to forge consensus on the provisions of Parliamentary Regulations.

Sharma said the speaker would soon hold a meeting with the chiefs of the three parties to discuss Parliamentary Regulations.

NC Chief Whip Chinkaji Shrestha, who was present during the speaker’s meeting with Deuba, said the NC president told the speaker that he was hopeful that PRDC, which had been discussing the issues would be able to resolve the differences.

According to Shrestha, Deuba also told the speaker that the government needed to be flexible to settle differences over the Parliamentary Regulations.

Speaker Gharti had yesterday discussed Parliamentary Regulations with Unified CPN-Maoist Chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.

Meanwhile, the speaker also held a meeting with the chief whips of NC, CPN-UML, Unified CPN-Maoist, Rastriya Prajatantra Party Nepal, Rastriya Prajatantra Party, Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal and Madhesi Janadhikar Forum-Democratic to discuss budgetary issues.

According to UML Chief Whip Bhanu Bhakta Dhakal, they discussed, among other things, whether to allow the presentation of government’s   policies and programmes by suspending pre-budget discussion or whether to go for holding pre-budget discussion before the presentation of the government’s policies and programmes.

Dhakal said the parties were open to all options. “In the past, we followed both kinds of practices.

Sometimes, the House suspended the pre-budget discussion and at other times, the House held pre-budget discussion before allowing the presentation of government’s policies and programmes,” Dhakal added.

He said a meeting of chief whips and the speaker would be held on May 1 and consensus would be forged on how parliamentary meetings would be held during the budget session.