Nepal

Kathmandu, September 19

Even as the government braces up for celebrating the Constitution Day tomorrow, many stakeholders have expressed discontent over implementation aspect of the constitution.

Chief Minister of Karnali Province Mahendra Bahadur Shahi said his province was far from being autonomous as envisioned by the constitution. &The Financial Commission has been formed, but it has yet to work on allocation of resources among three tiers of government. No effort has been made to divide natural resources among the provinces,& Shahi said. He added that his province was fully dependent on the federal government for finance.

Shahi said lack of human resource was one of the major challenges facing provincial governments. &We require 2,552 employees, but only have 1,000 to 1,200 employees, and they are junior employees. We do not have senior level employees and technical employees. Therefore, we are having hard time to execute development projects,& he said.

Senior Advocate Dinesh Tripathi said the governmenteffort to implement the constitution was not only slow, but in some cases its efforts were aimed at undermining the letter and spirit of the constitution.

&Some of the bills, particularly the Information Technology Bill, National Security Bill, Peace and Security Bill and the Media Council Bill that the government brought recently aimed at curtailing fundamental rights of the people. National Human Rights Act (Amendment) Bill proposes to curtain the autonomy of the NHRC,& he said and added that the governmentefforts to politicise judiciary had undermined its independence.

Chief Attorney of Province-2 Dipendra Jha said there were many challenges and contradictions in the constitution that made its implementation difficult.

&As the constitution making process was unnecessarily fast tracked, there are many contradictions in the constitution which can be sorted out only through its amendment,& he said.

Employees at chief attorneyoffice in provinces were under the Office of the Attorney General and they could not represent the provincial governments in province-versus federal or federal-versus province cases, according to Jha.

He said the constitution could be implemented effectively only when local levels were under the jurisdiction of concerned provinces. &It is a standard practice to amend the constitution through simple majority in the first-five-years.

But those who wrote the constitution made it a rigid document as a result of which the government has not been able to effectively implement the provisions in it,& he said. Jha said provincial governments were denied the power to levy excise duty and sales tax as a result of which they had to depend on the federal government for resource.

Former prime minister and chief of the federal council of Samajwadi Party-Nepal, Baburam Bhattarai today said at an interaction programme that implementation of the constitution was poor as the laws enacted to implement fundamental rights of the people guaranteed by the new constitution were not adequate.

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Kathmandu, September 19

The budget session of the Parliament ended today with Speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara and National Assembly Chairman Ganesh Prasad Timilsina reading out President Bidhya Devi Bhandarimessage to prorogue the Parliament in the respective houses.

Earlier, addressing the House of Representatives, Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba flayed the government for ‘failing to maintain peace and security across the country or control violence against women&. Deuba said anger against the government stemmed from the governmentmisrule and that should not be misconstrued as anger against the political system.

&Even after one-and-a-half years, the government has not been able to expand the acceptance of the constitution and to take action as per the spirit of the constitution and complete the remaining tasks related to federalism,& Deuba said.

The former PM said the government was trying to interfere in the judiciary, render Parliament ineffective and control the National Human Rights Commission.

&Although the PM has given the slogan of good governance, the biggest corruption scandals — wide-body aircraft purchase, gold smuggling, Baluwatar land grab — were seen during his rule,& Deuba added. &The government is trying to muzzle the press, restrict peopleaccess to information and is pursuing imbalanced foreign policy,& Deuba said. He added that the government had brought bills against the spirit of the constitution and tried to forcefully pass them without listening to opposition parties. He said if the government kept acting against the spirit of the constitution and interests of the public, NC would object to it both in the Parliament and on the streets.

Former PM and Samajwadi Party-Nepal leader Baburam Bhattarai said the constitution needed to be amended to address the concerns of Madhesis, Janajatis and other marginalised groups and communities. He said amendments were needed also to revise provincial boundaries as proposed by the erstwhile State Restructuring Commission and to adopt presidential form of government.

&The government has failed to play a balanced role vis-à-vis Indiaconcept of Himalayan frontiers, ChinaBelt and Road Initiative and USAIndo-Pacific Strategy. If we fail to manage our relations with these countries we might suffer the fate of Afghanistan,& he said. He added that playing one powerful country against another could be harmful for the nation. Bhattarai said left forces had the old habit of building relations on the basis of political ideology but they needed to keep national interest at the centre. Rastriya Janata Party- Nepal leader Rajendra Mahato also criticised the government for not amending the constitution.

Deputy parliamentary party leader of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) Subas Chandra Nembang said his party would try to settle issues on the basis of consensus.

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