The meeting convened at Singha Durbar in Kathmandu on Wednesday told PDCC Chairman Bhattarai to forward the committee reports and recommendations by “exercising his conscience” as a neutral person rather than the leader of a particular political party, Nepali Congress General Secretary Krishna Prasad Sitaula informed.

The meeting of PDCC is scheduled to take place at 2 pm today.

The CA had extended the deadline till November 1 to submit the report on the agreed issues and questionnaire of contentious issues of constitution writing.

The ruling—Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN-UML—tabled a common proposal on the contentious issues such as federalism and forms of governance at the PDCC. The ruling parties also submitted signatures of 43 lawmakers to committee Chairman Bhattarai as part of their pressure campaign.

On the other hand, the alliance of 20 opposition parties including the UCPN (Maoist) and Madhesi parties have been criticising the ruling parties for disregarding the spirit of consensus on the back of their numerical strength in the CA.

Against this backdrop, the ruling parties had insisted on sending all the proposals on contentious issues to the full House of CA, while opposition parties wanted them to be enlisted in the annex of the new statute.

 Meanwhile, UML leaders held a meeting with PDCC Chairman Bhattarai this morning at UML Secretary Bishnu Poudel’s residence in the Capital. During the meeting, the UML leaders urged Bhattarai to forward their proposal to the CA.