Kathmandu, July 13

Rastriya Prajantara Party-Nepal today said it would boycott feedback collection from public on the draft constitution, saying that the time period given for collecting feedback is ‘too short’.

The Constituent Assembly has decided to send its members to all districts on July 21 and 22 to collect people’s feedback on the first draft of the constitution.

A meeting of the Parliamentary Party of RPP-N today decided not to send its CA members to take part in the feedback collection.

Issuing a press statement, RPP-N has said its CA members will reject the draft as the major parties ‘have reduced the CA to a bunch of rubber stamps, prevented CA members from discussing the contents of the constitution, arbitrarily amended the CA Regulation and violated the Supreme Court’s interim order to present the complete first draft of the constitution’.

RPP-N has said that CA members of the party would boycott the programme as ‘the four parties had curtailed the sovereign rights of the CA from discussing the contents of the draft constitution and the current process also violated the interim order of the Supreme Court’.

The SC had issued an interim order, asking the CA to bring out a complete constitution by resolving all issues including federalism.

In its press release, RPP-N has said allocating only three hours for public feedback on July 21 and 22 was ‘nothing but eyewash’. The party said ‘there will be just one programme in each election constituency and since people will be busy in their fields at this time of the year, many people will not be able to take part in the public feedback programme’.

“As per the assembly, public feedback programme will end on July 22 and its report will be presented in the CA on July 23. How can public opinion be incorporated in the report?” the RPP-N wondered.

The RPP-N said the public feedback programme would be meaningless as many people would not be able to participate in the programme.