KATHMANDU, Feb 26: The Parliament Secretariat has postponed the meetings of the House of Representatives (HoR) for a week.
Speaker Devraj Ghimire informed at the end of the HoR meeting on Tuesday that the next meeting will be held on March 5 at 1 pm.
The federal parliament has been preparing a parliamentary calendar on a fortnightly basis. The calendar had scheduled the HoR meeting only till February 27. As per the schedule, the meeting was held until Tuesday.
Leaders of the ruling parties hope that the upcoming meeting of the HoR will endorse the ordinances introduced earlier by the government. Earlier on February 6, the government had withdrawn its plan to present the ordinances to vote amid failure to secure support of Janata Samajbadi Party-Nepal (JSP-N).
The government had introduced six different ordinances before summoning the parliament session.. Now, the government will have to get approval from both houses and bring a replacement bill.
However, it seems that getting the ordinance approved by the parliament is still an uphill battle.
The government has been struggling to endorse the ordinance, especially due to the parliamentary equation in the National Assembly. The next meeting of the National Assembly has been fixed for March 2.
After the government gets the ordinance approved and passes the replacement bill, the new arrangements made by the ordinances will get continuity. However, as per the legal provisions, the government has only 60 days’ time to endorse the ordinances after the parliament session begins.
The parliament session began on January 31. Now, the ordinances must be passed within 27 days by both the houses of parliament. Otherwise, the provisions made in the ordinances will automatically become ineffective.