Kathmandu, August 26 :

Serious difference over the issue of monarchy resulted in submission of an incomplete draft of interim constitution, members of the now defunct Interim Constitution Drafting Committee (ICDC) said today.

President of the Nepal Bar Association and one of the ICDC members, Shambhu Thapa, said the panel could not make a complete draft of the interim statute because of two schools of thoughts regarding the monarchy and other issues.

The draft of the interim constitution, however, would provide opportunity to the people to choose one of the two schools of thoughts, he said.

Thapa said the ICDC agreed to refer the draft to the top leaders of the seven-party alliance and the Maoists through the government and the Maoist talks teams after they failed to reach consensus on the monarchy, process of interim legislature and constituent assembly polls.

“This is not a complete draft of the interim constitution, but a report which we handed over to the Government-Maoist talks teams,” he said at a programmes held here.

Thapa also warned that the election to constituent assembly would not be held so soon as there would emerge more complications among the political parties once the nation enters the “tunnel” of the constituent assembly.

The duration of the interim statute has been proposed for two-and-half-years and the country would land into further crisis if the constituent assembly election was not held within the period, Thapa said.

He also warned that the constitution made through constituent assembly would also fail like in East Timor and Iraq if the process of the constituent assembly was not handled properly.

Former NBA president and member of the defunct ICDC, Harihar Dahal, said the 16 members of the panel could not reach a consensus due to narrow-mindedness. “Maybe, because of political misunderstanding we could not prepare a draft of consensus,” Dahal said, adding that no principle of constitutionalism was followed while preparing the draft.

He said they kept the monarchy under “transitional provision” and gave no power to the King as per the spirit of the May 18 Declaration of the House of Representatives.

He said that they also could not reach consensus on the process of reappointment of judges, the process of the constituent assembly, number and nature of the interim legislature and issue of citizenship certificates.

“We have given more than one option and kept some issues in brackets where we failed to agree on them,” said Dahal.

Chandeswor Shrestha who represented the Janamorcha Nepal in ICDC said they had extensively discussed whether or not to keep the monarchy in the interim statute.