KATHMANDU, DECEMBER 7
CPN-UML Chair KP Sharma Oli, who is smarting from the defeat he suffered in the House of Representatives dissolution case, today told office bearers of the Nepal Bar Association that their demand for Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher JB Rana's resignation was not enough to bring the required reform in the Judiciary.
Talking to NBA officials today at his residence after receiving the NBA memorandum, Oli said the NBA had raised issues of fairness in the judiciary, but it had not raised neutrality in their memorandum. "If judiciary is fair and impartial, there can't be democracy. Judiciary is full of anomalies. Only those who can buy justice or have access to powerful people get justice," Oli told NBA office bearers.
He said his party could support NBA demands only if it incorporated other issues, but he did not elaborate them. Earlier, Oli had said that not only the CJ, but four other justices of the constitutional bench who wrote verdicts in the second HoR dissolution case should also resign.
The constitutional bench had invalidated Oli's move to dissolve the HoR when he was the PM and had ordered the president to appoint Sher Bahadur Deuba the new PM.
Oli said that leaders of the ruling alliance who benefitted form the SC verdict in the HoR dissolution case were not willing to initiate impeachment process against the CJ and his party did not have two-thirds majority required to pass the impeachment motion.
Oli said one of the justices who drafted the verdict in the second HoR dissolution case wrote an email to fellow justices saying that justices went beyond the constitutional provision to remove him from the PM's post.
NBA Vice-president Rakshya Basyal said they told Oli that if he wanted to add his suggestions on judicial reform, he could do that, but he ought to take an initiative to impeach the CJ.
"Although Oli does not appear to have changed his position on the NBA protest, he agreed that there was corruption, anomalies, and shenanigans of middlemen in the judiciary," Basyal added. She said it was strange that despite prolonged NBA protest, the CJ was not ready to resign from his post. Basyal said their protest would continue till Rana resigned.
The NBA submitted a memorandum to Oli listing 17 reasons for impeaching Rana.
A version of this article appears in the print on December 8, 2021 of The Himalayan Times.
