The SAC meeting held at Singha Durbar was supposed to form four subcommittees to study and prepare thematic reports on weapons of archeological importance, traffic management, criteria for providing state facilities and on women, dalits and domestic violence.[break]
A proposal prepared by the committee secretariat as per recommendations made by some key leaders of the committee was tabled at the meeting. Under the proposal, a seven-member subcommittee headed by CPN-UML leader Pradeep Gyawali was to study and prepare a report on weapons of archeological importance.
A five-member body headed by Nepali Congress (NC) lawmaker Arjun Joshi was proposed for studying the problems of traffic management and recommend solutions, while another five-member panel, under the leadership of UCPN (Maoist) Spokesman Dinanath Sharma, was to recommend criteria on VIPs to be given state facilities.
Likewise, a fourth subcommittee, headed by Pratibha Rana of Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), was meant to study women, dalits and domestic violence.
Some lawmakers accused some of the committee members of trying to impose their decisions on other members. Hariraj Limbu, Santosh Budhamagar and Parshuram Ramtel of the Maoists and Ramsaroj Yadav, Krishna Kumari Pariyar and Kalyani Rijal of NC strongly objected to the proposed subcommittees.
"The way heads and members of the subcommittees are proposed and imposed on us clearly shows the feudal mindset of some of the leaders," Limbu said at the meeting. "It can´t be mandatory for us to accept all the decisions imposed on us in that manner." He also threatened to boycott the meetings or write a note of dissent if such practices are given continuity in the coming meetings.
According to some members, they were irked by the proposal as the same leaders who were heads or members of other committees in the past were frequently given the opportunities while some others never got a chance to be in a subcommittee. "I have never been given a chance to be even a member of any subcommittee so far.
What is the meaning of being a SAC member if my role is only to attend the meetings and okay the proposals tabled here," said Pariyar.
Raj Bahadur Budha Chhettri said the lawmakers stood up against the tendency of certain leaders to occupy posts everywhere. "Central leaders not only desire to be ministers, committee heads, chief whips or whips, they want to be members of subcommittees as well. That is not suitable given their position," he told Republica.
Spill over of intra-party feud
While some lawmakers described the protests as directed against "the monopoly of some influential leaders" in the committee, others described it as a spillover affect from intra-party feuding into the parliamentary committees.
"We should resolve this issue within this committee itself and not from outside. We shouldn´t go for division of seats in the subcommittees based on the factions of various political parties," Maoist lawmaker Dinanath Sharma said at the meeting.
Ramjanam Chaudhary of Madhesi People´s Rights Forum suggested to the leaders to split one of the subcommittees and form one more subcommittee so as to accommodate all the members. "The solution is simple. Let´s split a subcommittee and accommodate all the members," he said.
However NC leader Dr Prakash Sharan Mahat objected to the idea of increasing the number of subcommittees. He suggested not to have any lawmaker, who has already served as head or member of any subcommittee in the past, in the proposed subcommittees. Eventually a decision was deferred till Tuesday.
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