Constitution committee begins work

The Constitution Committee (CC) on Monday began a daunting task of reconciling prevailing differences in constitution writing and preparing an integrated draft of the constitution. The CC was initially constituted with a mandate of preparing an integrated draft as the assumption then was that the CA house will send thematic reports to the CC after reconciling all the differences. But that has not been the case. The CA has so far sent only three consensus thematic reports and has forwarded seven other reports on which parties still have major differences.



The task of reconciling these differences, which the various thematic committees and the high level taskforce failed to achieve, will not be easy. But there is no better platform other than the CC to take up the job and the parties have expressed their faith in its capacity to do it. We wish the CC all the best and hope that it will be able to prepare the integrated draft on time so that the constitution can be promulgated within the extended time of the CA, May 28, 2011.



The top leaders of the parties also have their responsibilities. The CC cannot meet the challenge unless the leaders cooperate and do their bit. It is after all the political parties who will have to come to an agreement to draft and promulgate the new constitution. Thankfully, many top leaders of various political parties are members in the CC so they cannot shift the burden or the blame onto others. Since the high level task force has resolved more than 125 disputed issues and parties now differ only on 80 issues, the work ahead seems achievable. The parties have already taken a wise decision of deferring the issue of restructuring of the state--one of the most contentious issues in the constitution drafting process -- and are likely to mandate a high level commission to suggest the appropriate federal model for Nepal.



The CC must now divide time between reconciling the existing differences and preparing the framework for the integrated draft. We also think it will be helpful to form an informal group outside the CC to work in parallel to narrow down differences on the thematic reports. Since many of the key leaders who worked in the taskforce and made huge contributions in narrowing down the differences are not the members of the CC, it will miss their inputs. Lawmakers such as Ramesh Lekhak, Radheshyam Adhikari, Bharat Mohan Adhikari and Ek Raj Bhandari had played a key role in the task force. Since such an informal group can also invite the Speaker and top leaders for deliberations, we believe that it will actually help expedite the reconciliation process.

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