KATHMANDU: The task force of the Constitution Drafting Committee of Constituent Assembly on Monday continued its work of preparing a draft of the new constitution by incorporating agreed issues and settling some other minor issues on its own.

The meeting that began at 8:30am was continuing till late evening. “It is scheduled to continue till midnight and resume tomorrow morning again,” said task force member Krishna Bhakta Pokharel. The task force completed one round paper work on preamble, preliminary, citizenship, fundamental rights, directive principles of state, President and Vice-president, executive and federal and provincial parliaments, according Pokharel. Some disputed issues such as where should pluralism be inserted is yet to be settled, according to sources.

“Although, the major issues of federalism and state restructuring were resolved when the 16-point pact was signed on June 8, we are working on minor issues related to state restructuring and economic relations between federal government and provincial government,” said task force member Ram Narayan Bidari.

Since the task force is yet to work on many other issues including transitional period, constitution amendment and issue of restructuring of office bearers of constitutional bodies, it will try to settle them by tomorrow evening, according to Bidari.

Although the task force was supposed to complete its task yesterday and table the report today at the CDC, today’s CDC meeting was postponed till 1:00pm on June 24 after the task force could not complete its work. Some key disputed issues include — whether office bearers of constitutional bodies, including justices of Supreme Court should be reappointed after promulgation of the constitution till new appointments are made as per the new statute; whether to retain the existing districts as service centres; whether to mention the provision related to autonomous, protected and special regions under special structure to protect underprivileged/backward/minority groups or let the concerned state assembly bring separate laws regarding this; and whether to include pluralism in the preamble or in another section.

The task force has continued its task despite the Supreme Court’s interim order issued on Friday not to move ahead with the process of delivering the new constitution without resolving federalism issues, including names and boundaries of provinces, as agreed in the 16-point deal.