KATHMANDU, MARCH 3
The 15th All Nepal Lawyers National Conference of Nepal Bar Association today issued a 24-point declaration saying it would not accept Cholendra Shumsher JB Rana as chief justice as he was suspended after an impeachment motion was filed against him in the House of Representatives.
Reading out the NBA declaration passed by the 15th conference of the lawyers' umbrella body, NBA General Secretary Lilamani Paudel said at a press conference today that the impeachment motion was filed against the CJ as a result of continued protests by the NBA and Supreme Court justices.
The NBA declaration has urged the HoR to immediately initiate action on the impeachment motion against CJ Rana and pass it.
"Rana's exit may not be a solution to all the problems plaguing the judiciary. In fact, it may only be the starting point of judicial reform,"
Paudel added.
The NBA also demanded that the body concerned take action against justices of the Supreme Court and other courts if they are suspected of involvement in corruption.
It also urged the government to amend the constitution in order to remove the chief justice from the Constitutional Council as appointments made by this body were often challenged in the Constitutional Court headed by the CJ.
It demanded that all judges, their family members and lawyers be made to mandatorily submit property details annually, failing which, they should face criminal liability.
The NBA said cases related to power sharing and federalism issues that are sub judice at the constitutional bench of the SC had not been adjudicated for long, and this had hindered implementation of federalism.
It asked the SC to adjudicate federalism related cases at the earliest. The NBA demanded that the government ensure people's right to fair trial and withdraw cases against people filed due to their political ideology.
The lawyers body also urged the SC to implement the reform agenda proposed by the Justice Hari Krishna Karki-led committee.
The NBA said it was inappropriate for judges or lawyers to receive medals from the government for performing their duties in a particular case.
"The conference accepts that members of the Judicial Council nominated by the NBA and the prime minister have not been performing satisfactorily in recent years," the lawyer's body said. It asked the government to amend the constitution to enforce restriction on Judicial Council members on a par with Supreme Court justices.
The NBA said that the Russian attack on Ukraine was an attack on a sovereign nation and it was a violation of the UN Charter.
It also said the dispute between Russia and Ukraine should be resolved through peaceful means.
NBA Vice-president Rakshya Basyal told THT that the declaration of the 15th conference of lawyers was important as it had come at a time when the NBA had been crusading for judicial reform and seeking the exit of CJ Rana, who it termed an obstacle to judicial reform.
He said the NBA had made it clear that it would not accept Rana either in the judiciary or in any public post irrespective of the fate of impeachment motion and that was an important message. "This means the NBA shares the view that the chief justice should not be a controversial figure and once his/ her role becomes controversial, he/she should be removed from the post," Basyal added.
She argued that the declaration had called for submission of lawyers' property details annually because the NBA wanted lawyers to be free of the slur that they were corrupt.
A version of this article appears in the print on March 4, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
