KATHMANDU: The third session of the Federal Parliament -- made up of the House of Representatives (lower house) and the National Assembly (upper house) -- began at 4:00 pm today at the New Baneshwor-based Federal Parliament Building.

In the beginning of first meeting of the session, Speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara welcomed all the present members to the session and also read out a letter received from the Office of the President about the session call. The meeting observed a minute-silence in honour of all known and unknown people who attained martyrdom in course of several movements at different times in the country.

This session is also considered as the ‘bill session’ and it is mandated to go through discussions of drafts of bills and their endorsements. Its major task is to amend or replace laws inconsistent with the constitution, to the extent of such inconsistency. As per the constitutional provision, laws inconsistent with the constitution either need to be amended or replaced by new ones within March 5, 2019 which marks the completion of one year of the first meeting of the Federal Parliament.

Leaders and members from political parties representing in the Federal Parliament have already started putting their opinions in the meeting.

Thereafter, the Bill on Administrative Court Bill-2075 with the message received from the NA will be tabled in the Parliament Secretariat. Minister for Federal Affairs and General Administration Lalbabu Pandit is scheduled to present the Employees Adjustment Ordinance-2075 BS.