KATHMANDU, SEPTEMBER 23

The Supreme Court has rescheduled the hearing of five writ petitions filed against President Bidhya Devi Bhandari's decision to pocket veto the citizenship bill for Sunday. The apex court also rescheduled the case filed against Speaker Agni Prasad Sapkota and Deputy Speaker Pushpa Bhusal seeking their removal from their posts for Sunday, according to SC Spokesperson Bimal Paudel.

The SC rescheduled the preliminary hearings of the two cases as the benches that were assigned to hear these cases did not have time to do so today.

Five writ petitions filed against the president's decision to pocket veto the citizenship bill and one writ petition filed against the speaker and the deputy speaker were assigned to the single bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Sharma but these cases were at the bottom of the cause list.

Advocates Sunil Ranjan Singh and Sagar Baral are among those who have filed petitions at the apex court demanding a directive against the president to obligate her to authenticate the bill.

President Bhandari, who had sent the citizenship bill to the House of Representatives for reconsideration on August 14, refused to sign it after the Parliament passed the bill as it is and resent it to her for her approval.

In accordance with Article 111 (3) of the constitution, the president can use suspension veto sending the bill to the House of origin with her objection, but Article 113 (4) requires the president to authenticate any bill sent for a second time after being passed by both Houses of Parliament with or without any changes.

Advocates Singh and Sarita Thapa have stated in their writ petition that the president's refusal to sign the bill was violation of Article 113 (4) and her actions were an insult against the Parliament, which had elected her to the high office. Singh told THT that chances of the SC referring his case to the constitutional bench of the SC were high as the issues raised in his petition involved interpretation of constitutional provisions.

Advocate Kishor Paudel and others have moved the SC against the speaker and the deputy speaker seeking their removal from their posts. Paudel and others have argued in their petition that since the Election Commission had set September 18 and 19 for the submission of lists of proportional representation candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections, the tenure of lawmakers ended a day before the submission date, i.e. on September 17. On the same ground, the speaker and the deputy speaker should also be relieved of their responsibilities from the same date.

A source close to Speaker Sapkota told THT that the speaker was of the view that the five-year tenure of the House of Representatives would end on March 5 if the date on which members of the HoR had taken oath of office and secrecy after the last general election. 'Even if the election date is counted as the beginning of the five year tenure, the term of the current HoR will end only on November 25,' he said.

He added that if the EC rule established during local elections was followed, local representatives who had filed candidacies had resigned from their post before filing their candidacies and those who did not contest the elections, handed over their responsibility to newly elected representatives and the same should apply to HoR members as well.

The source said that the speaker was of the view that he would resign if he decided to contest parliamentary elections and he would remain on his post a day before the filing of his candidacy.

The EC has set October 9 for filing candidacies under the first-past-the-post election system.

The source also said that the government only ended the parliamentary session and had not said that the tenure of the HoR had ended.

'It's only the CPN-UML that has said that the tenure of the HoR has ended. How can the constitutional provision that guarantees five-year term be ignored?' he wondered.

A version of this article appears in the print on September 24, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.