A committee of the Constituent Assembly (CA) of Nepal on Sunday asked for extension of deadline to settle disputes related to the new Constitution.
Chairman of the Constitutional Political Dialogue and Consensus Committee Dr. Baburam Bhattarai handed over the committee’s reports to CA Chairman Subas Nembang — one dealt with issues that claimed agreement between the political parties and the other on issues the parties failed to reach consensus by the deadline of September 6.
Dr. Bhattarai requested Mr. Nembang to extend the deadline for the committee to reach consensus on contentious issues of the statute.
The move comes after Nepal’s three major political parties failed to forge consensus on the contentious subjects in the new Constitution — federation, governance system, electoral system and judiciary.
The Nepali Congress, the CPN-UML and the UCPN (Maoist) reiterated that they would bring out the new Constitution by the agreed deadline of January 22 next year.
The two ruling parties, the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML, were initially unwilling to extend the deadline and instead wanted to follow the procedure which has been agreed to by all the 30 political parties represented in the CA. They had also agreed to decide the issues by majority voting if no consensus was reached. The UCPN (Maoist) and other smaller parties are opposed to deciding issues by majority votes.
The NC and the UML, with support from other partners have the two-thirds majority to get endorsed any provision.
