CA meeting on December 6 had formed a five-member amendment draft committee with a view to pave the way for forwarding the State Restructuring Commission (SRC) reports to one of the CA committees.[break]
After the prime minister submitted the commission´s reports to CA Chairman Subas Nembang last week, the document is gathering dust at Nembang´s office for a week due to ambiguity over the procedure for incorporating the SRC suggestions in the CA.
Of the total five members of the draft committee, all the four members -- Ramesh Lekhak of Nepali Congress (NC), Agni Kharel of CPN-UML, Janak Kumari Chalise of CPN (ML) and Neelam Barma of Madhesi People´s Rights Forum-Democratic (MPRF-D) -- except coordinator Amrita Thapa Magar of UCPN (Maoist) are for sending the report to a full CA House for deliberations and then forward it to the CA´s Constitutional Committee (CC).
But Magar is insisting on forwarding the report to the CA thematic committee on state restructuring for deliberations before forwarding it to a full CA and the CC, which is entrusted with preparing the integrated draft of the new constitution.
“It is taking time because I am for preparing the draft through consensus among the committee members. I believe the regulations should not be drafted by putting it to vote,” Magar told Republica.
However, other members see no point in further delaying the draft. “All of us four members -- except the coordinator -- are for forwarding the SRC reports to the full CA for deliberations before submitting it to the CC,” Lekhak told Republica. “The next meeting is scheduled for tomorrow (Thursday) and the draft should be finalized at the same meeting.”
Non-Maoist members have also criticized the coordinator for delaying the draft even as an overwhelming majority -- four members -- in the five-member body has a consensus opinion on the issue. "She should have agreed to draft the proposal much earlier but we don´t understand why she has been delaying it,” said a member.
Meanwhile, committee member Kharel also raised the issue at the meeting of three major political parties held at Gokarna Forest Resort on Wednesday.
Sources said the leaders asked the committee members to resolve the issue within the committee.
Meanwhile, CPN-UML that had remained divided over the issues of state restructuring is also at odds over forwarding the SRC report to CA.
A group of lawmakers, including Maoist leader Hitman Shakya, and UML lawmakers Mangalsiddhi Manandhar and Ram Chandra Jha, pressed CA Chairman Nembang to create an environment for forwarding the SRC report to the CA thematic committee on state restructuring. UML´s Kharel in the drafting committee has been consistently speaking in favor of forwarding the report directly to the full CA.
"We urged the CA chairman to make sure that the SRC reports will be discussed at the CA thematic committee as envisaged by the present CA regulations,” Manandhar told Republica.
Interestingly, UML representatives -- Sarbaraj Khadka and Bhogendra Jha -- in SRC were also divided over the two proposed federal maps. While Khadka stood for 6-province model, Jha supported the 11-province model.
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