Miscellaneous
Apex court seeks minutes of 16-point agreement
The Supreme Court (SC) has ordered the government to furnish the original minutes concerning the 16-point agreement among the four major political partiesThe Supreme Court (SC) has ordered the government to furnish the original minutes concerning the 16-point agreement among the four major political parties that had agreed to cut short the constitution writing procedures in the Constituent Assembly.
A division bench of Chief Justice Kalyan Shrestha and Justice Om Prakash Mishra on Wednesday based on a writ appeal filed by Bijaya Kant Karna and Rita Sah.
Four major political parties—Nepali Congress, CPN-UML, UCPN (Maoist) and Madhesi Janadhikar Forum-Loktantrik—had struck the 16-point deal with the purpose of expediting the constitution drafting process and promulgating the final charter within couple of months. To that end, the four-party leaders had agreed to settle the issue of federalism through a commission after the constitution has been promulgated. On june 20, the SC had also issued an interim order, temporarily halting the implementation of the agreement that was signed in the first week of June.
Then, a single bench of Justice Girish Chandra Lal had directed the defendants not to implement the agreement, arguing that the decision to cut short the constitution drafting process without finalising the federal boundaries was against the provision set in the Interim Constitution.
The Article 138 of the Interim Constitution mentions that the issues of state restructuring—delineation of federal provinces, their number and names—should be decided by the Constituent Assembly.