A cabinet meeting held in Singha Durbar on Thursday took a decision to this effect as the CDEC is expiring without reaching to any agreement on making fresh delineation on electoral constituencies. [break]
The government had formed the Tahir Ali Ansar–led CDC on June 25, entrusting it with reviewing the existing 240 election constituencies in accordance with the latest census report. While geologist Netra Dhital, sociologist Dambar Chemjong and former bureaucrat Madhunidhi Tiwari are the members, legal secretary at the Prime Minister´s Office, Raju Man Singh Malla is the member secretary of the CDEC.
According to Article 154 A of the Interim Constitution, the government may constitute a Constituency Delimitation Commission to determine election constituencies for the purpose of electing of members of the Constituent Assembly, and the commission shall consist of a retired justice of the SC as chairperson, a geographer, a sociologist and an administrator or management expert as members and a special class officer in the service of the government as member-secretary.
As per the existing constitutional provision, the number of constituencies needs to be increased as the latest census showed that the population has increased in all the districts across the country except for Kavrepalanchowk. Although the constitution has stated that the number of electoral constituencies shall be increased on the basis of latest population census, the number of constituencies has already been fixed in the constitution and that has stood as a contradiction.
A recent amendment to the interim constitution has fixed the total number of seats for the upcoming CA with a provision to have a total 491 members of the CA. While 240 will be elected directly from the constituencies, 240 others will be nominated under seats allocations under proportional representation system.
Likewise, the parties had agreed to nominate 11 others in the CA. As the CDEC required political consensus to take any decision on delineating fresh electoral constituencies in view of the constitutional difficulties, High Level Political Committee (HLPC) had earlier formed a separate eight-member task force to make suggestions to the HLPC. The Task Force also failed to make any recommendation to the HLPC as it involved constitutional difficulties.
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