KATHMANDU: The High Level Political Mechanism today failed to decide on the issue of forming State Restructuring Commission after the Unified CPN-Maoist proposed to settle all the contentious issues in a package deal, which included formation of national unity government.

The HLPM, which comprises three major parties’ top leaders, had on Wednesday agreed to form the commission at today’s meeting. Formation of the commission is the desired provision of Article 138 of the interim constitution for carving out the federal structure of the country. Only 56 days remain for the new constitution to be drafted.

“Nepali Congress and CPN-UML proposed to form the commission first and then deal with other issues, while the UCPN-M proposed to deal with all the contentious issues in a package,” said Ram Chandra Paudel, Parliamentary Party leader, NC, after the mechanism’s meeting held at UML PP office at Singha Durbar. UML Chairman Jhalanath Khanal chaired today’s HLPM meeting and the next meeting has been scheduled on Sunday.

Paudel told The Himalayan Times that the UCPN-M backed two-pillar strategy - putting the undecided issues delaying the new constitution to vote at the Constituent Assembly and making attempts to forge consensus on the issues. “The debatable issues, however, would again hang in balance even if voting process was opted for without forging consensus on them. So, there is no alternative to consensus to settle the issues,” he said.

Maoist vice chairman Narayan Kaji Shrestha told mediapersons that the three

parties could not form the state restructuring commission issue today, as they were unable to finalise time-bound work schedule. The HLPM had agreed on Wednesday to prepare a work schedule so that the May 28 deadline of constitution writing could be met.

“We could not finalise the work schedule as we are yet to reach consensus on mandate and deadline of commission,” said Shrestha. The HLPM, according to him, is yet to settle the issue of how to link the commission’s report to the process of constitution writing.

Shrestha said the CA should not be made business-less by halting the CA’s voting process. “We proposed to begin the voting process as we have failed to forge consensus,” he said.

Sources said the parties were setting a deadline of a month or 20 days for the commission to submit its report.

UML chief whip Bhim Acharya said Maoists’ proposal of opting for voting process would not aid the constitution writing process until the consensus was forged on the primary issues. “If we opted for voting process and forwarded two divergent drafts to the Constitutional Committee of the CA, the drafts would be trapped at the CC and it would be meaningless,” he said.

Senior leaders of the three parties attended today’s

meeting.