HOUSE DISSOLUTION
KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 4
Deputy Attorney General Padam Prasad Pandey pleaded before the constitutional bench of the Supreme Court that articles 74, 85 and 76 (7) gave the prime minister the prerogative to dissolve the House of Representatives.
Defending PM KP Sharma Oli's move of dissolving the HoR, Pandey argued before the bench that the constitution gave the PM more power than the powers conferred on the PM under the 1990 constitution and a prime minister appointed under any subclause of Article 76 had the power to dissolve the HoR. He said Article 76 (7) only said that the existing PM could recommend dissolution if a new PM could not be appointed.
Pandey said that in the UK, dissolution of the HoR was considered a political question and the court did not entertain the House dissolution case. He said HoR had been dissolved five times in India between 1970 and 1999 and the court always validated the decision of the prime minister because the court accepted the PM's prerogative in the parliamentary form of government.
He said the current constitution gave the PM some of the powers that were vested in the head of state in the 1990 constitution and thus the PM under the new constitution was more powerful.
He said the constitution barred lawmakers from moving no-trust motion in the first two years of his/her tenure and that also was indicative of the PM enjoying more power under the new constitution.
In the parliamentary form of government, the principle behind giving the PM the prerogative to dissolve the HoR is to ensure that the PM has the big stick to get his policies passed in the HoR.
Justice Sapana Pradhan Malla asked Pandey: Do you mean to say that it is not necessary to write in the constitution about the prerogative of the PM to dissolve the HoR, but it is necessary to write about the no-trust motion? If you say that the PM should be powerful then how can there be a balance? Deputy Attorneys General Narayan Prasad Paudel and Bishwaraj Koirala also defended the PM's move to dissolve the Lower House.
A version of this article appears in the print on February 5, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
