Kathmandu, May 29

Chairperson of the parliamentary committee Ranju Kumari Jha said that the constitution of the country had been formulated after six years of detailed study of constitutions of different countries.

It has thus provided equal rights and duties to citizens in every way, but due to lack of implementation, people have been suffering social and cultural discrimination.

Speaking in the Dialogue on Parliamentarian’s role to Ending Discriminations and Social Evil Practices, organised today by Community Radio Network on its Anniversary, she informed that Parliament has formulated the best policy and that could effectively impact social issues as it had a clear punishment system; but lack of implementation had created a problem related to understanding among people.

There are 41 social evils and bad practices prevalent in the country such as chhaupadi pratha, witchcraft, dowry system, untouchability etc.

Most of these practices have impacted women adversely. “We have therefore formulated laws that will enable empowerment of women for their. Now, married women have equal rights to parental property, citizenship based on the mother’s name etc,” informed Jha.

In the same way, Ram Narayan Bidari opined that people have bad concept of parliamentarian responsibility. He said, “The duty of the Parliament is not to construct roads and bridges but to formulate appropriate law and the budget and form the government. The part of implementation is the job of the executive.”

He informed that unless people internalised the wrong practices they were engaged in and brought a cultural revolution in the country, the law or policy alone couldn’t bring any kind of change.

“People blame religion as people blindly believe, but in actuality religion has taught good things and welfare of society. But many provide wrong messages to the people.” Due to wrong information, nearly 51 per cent females are suffering.  Along with implementation of laws, efforts must be made to remove discrimination and social evils, said member of Parliament Aasta Laxmi Shakya.