The Supreme Court of Nepal on Wednesday started hearing writ petitions filed against the dissolution of the House of Representatives of Nepal by President Bidhya Devi Bhandari. The court then forwarded the petitions to a Constitutional Bench.
The Constitutional Bench, headed by Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher J.B. Rana, will start hearing the petitions from Friday.
Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli recommended President Bhandari to dissolve Parliament after he briefed his Cabinet colleagues during an emergency meeting on December 20.
The constitutional Bench will be in focus for the next few days as the Nepal Communist Party appears divided between two factions led by Mr. Oli and co-chair of the party Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’.
The Bench will examine the constitutionality of the decision to dissolve the house especially as the 2015 Constitution does not allow for such a move for political necessities.
The judiciary’s intervention, however, is unlikely to repair the broken affairs of the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) which is now clearly divided between the factions led by Mr. Oli and his challengers Mr. Prachanda and former Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal.
Warring factions
On Wednesday, a special meeting was convened under the leadership of Mr. Nepal and Mr. Prachanda which continued till late in the evening amid expectation that the group will declare the expulsion of Mr. Oli.
The warring factions have adopted different tactics until now with the section led byMr. Oli already preparing for general election and the Prachanda-Nepal led faction focussing on the judicial and constitutional route to restore the dissolved Parliament. NCP general secretary Bishnu Prasad Poudel on Wednesday blamed Mr. Prachanda of triggering the current round of crisis and asked the Oli-led faction to prepare for elections.
