KATHMANDU: The Constituent Assembly (CA) today made the 10th amendment to its timetable for drafting the new constitution. However, the final date of May 28, slated for promulgating the constitution, remains unchanged.

Talking to mediapersons, CA chairman Subas Nembang said, “Today’s amendment has not allocated a fixed time for certain programme to be performed during the process of drafting constitution. The timetable has been made flexible so that we will not need to amend it again.” It will be the final amendment, he added.

Nembang said that a mechanism comprising Parliamentary Party (PP) leaders of all parties will initiate discussions from tomorrow to forge consensus on various contentious issues. The mechanism, which is provisioned in the Interim Constitution to forge consensus among parties, will be activated now, he added.

He also maintained that various thematic committees of the CA will accomplish their assigned tasks at the earliest possible and the new timetable will be implemented as per an understanding in the Business Advisory Committee of the CA.

The committee is represented by all political parties in the CA. Nepali Congress chief whip Laxman Prasad Ghimire, who attended the meeting of the advisory committee, today said that an understanding to provide a month to the Constitutional Committee (CC) for compiling the reports of the11 thematic committees has been reached.

The parties, during the advisory committee’s meeting, agreed to move ahead with two options — CA’s voting process and attempt to forge consensus among parties — and forward the reports of thematic committees to the CC.

However, reports of all thematic committees are to be approved by at least a simple majority of the CA full House before forwarding them to the CC.

Till date, only two reports have been forwarded, while nine have been delayed owing to differences among parties.