KATHMANDU, July 6: The Parliamentary Hearings Special Committee (PHSC) has started studying complaints registered at the committee against the chief justice and chief election commissioner nominees from Tuesday.

The committee rejected 10 out of 18 complaints against them citing lack of argument or for registering the complaints just to oppose the hearings process.

 Other eight complaints have been distributed to lawmakers for study. According to the committee secretariat, six complaints are against the CJ nominee Sushila Karki and other two are against the recommendation of would-be CEC Aayodhi Prasad Yadav.

Three complaints have been filed against recommended justices at the Apex Court and other nine are against recommended ambassadors. The Judicial Council had recommended the names of 11 justices for the Supreme Court and a cabinet decision had recommended 23 ambassadors for different countries.

A meeting of the committee on Tuesday morning decided to open the envelopes containing the complaints against Karki and Yadav only after lawmakers sorted out confusions raised by some constitutional provisions regarding the recommendations.

Lawmakers from the main opposition Nepali Congress (NC) in the hearings committee argued during the meeting that article 292 of the new constitution provisions recommendations of justices and ambassadors from the Constitutional Council.

“We are planning to discuss the issue with top guns of major political parties as some committee members raised the confusion created by Article 292 of the new constitution,” said Madhesi People's Right Forum Democratic chief whip Yogendra Chaudhary.

However, lawmakers from CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Center) argued that Article 129 clearly states that the recommendations of justices should be made by the Judicial Council.

A Maoist lawmaker accused the NC of just dilly-dallying the hearings process.  

Meanwhile, the committee meeting also discussed about their work plan about concluding the hearings of only the chief justice and the chief election commissioner at first.

According to a committee member, the meetings on Thursday and Friday will start discussion over the complaints and will conduct hearings of the recommended CJ and CEC.

 
• parliamentary hearings special committee
 
• lack of argument