Kathmandu, November 27

The winter session of the Parliament is likely to begin a bit early this time considering the need for election of a new speaker of the House of Representatives.

Going by the trend of past years, the winter session generally begins in the last week of December. Although the government has not yet communicated about its homework for next parliament session to the Parliament Secretariat, the latter expects the session to begin a bit early compared to previous years to elect the new HoR speaker, according to the Parliament Secretariat Spokesperson Dasharath Dhamala.

To begin the House session, the Cabinet has to decide and recommend the same to the president. The session begins following the president’s approval.

“So far the government has not conveyed us anything about the beginning of the House session,” said Dhamala. “It is up to the Cabinet to decide. However, we are always ready to conduct the session.”

Dhamala said major agenda for the upcoming session would be election of the HoR speaker.

The post of the HoR speaker has remained vacant after Krishna Bahadur Mahara resigned on October 1 from the post following rape allegations. The parties, including both ruling and opposition, have yet to decide on a new speaker.

Election of the HoR speaker involves some complications. The constitution’s Article 91 (2) states that the election shall be held in a way such that either the speaker or the deputy speaker is a woman, and they shall be representatives of different parties.

Earlier, both the speaker, and Deputy Speaker Shiva Maya Tumbahamphe represented the ruling Nepal Communist Party as the CPN-UML (Tumbahamphe’s party) and CPN- MC (Mahara’s party) had not merged at the time of their appointment. After Mahara’s resignation, the unified NPC has to give up one of the two posts. However, it is in no mood to give up the speaker’s post. This means Tumbahamphe’s resignation is a must for the NCP to contest the post of speaker. Although the NCP has been holding internal discussions on the matter, it has yet to reach a conclusion.

Other agenda for the upcoming House session include discussion on various bills. Presently, the Parliament already has more than 30 bills tabled, while the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs has approved more than 40 bills and forwarded those to various ministries, according to the ministry’s Secretary Rajib Gautam. “The upcoming session will have enough business,” said Gautam. The government, however, has yet to decide on the commencement of the new House session. The government’s Spokesperson and Minister of Communications and Information Technology Gokul Baskota said the House session would be called timely.