Govt registers amendments to new constitution

KATHMANDU, Oct 8: The government has registered an amendment bill at the parliament secretariat with a view to address two major demands of the agitating Madhesi political parties.

The government in the bill has proposed making changes to four articles of the new constitution to address the demands of the Madhesi parties, who want proportional and inclusive representation in state bodies.The other provision proposed for change is related to delineation of electoral constituencies as demanded by the Madhesi parties.

The term "Based on proportional inclusive principle" in Article 42 will be replaced by "based on inclusive principle", reads the amendment bill registered by Minister for Law and Justice Narahari Acharya at the parliament secretariat on Wednesday.

Also, the government has proposed amendment to Article 84 relating to delineation of electoral constituencies to elect members of the Lower House of Representatives. In this article, the bill has proposed to replace the phrase "based on geography and population" with "based on population and geographic convenience and uniqueness".

The government has also proposed replacing Clause 5 of Article 286 relating to constituency delimitation. The government has rephrased the wordings of the article. As in the existing provision, the amendment has also proposed taking both population and geography as the bases to delineate electoral constituencies in the new federal set up. But the amendment has rephrased the words to place emphasis on population. While the existing provision states "while taking population and the geography as the bases for representation", the amendment says "while taking mainly population as the basis".

Also, the bill has proposed retaining at least one electoral constituency in each of the existing 75 districts.

The government has registered the amendments at the parliament secretariat at a time when Madhes-based parties have been protesting for nearly two months.

A cabinet meeting last week had decided to make amendments for the first time in the constitution, which was promulgated on September 20.

Amendments to these provisions will address the two major demands of the Madhesi parties. However, they have refused to withdraw protests demanding changes in the delineation of proposed provinces immediately.

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