The Ministry of Law and Justice has identified 174 Acts that need to be amended or replaced with new ones in three months as they contradict with the provisions of the constitution that came into force three years ago.

The ministry reviewed all the Acts related to 22 ministries including the Prime Minister’s Office on its own after the latter turned closed ears to its several circulars. The ministry has forwarded the list to the respective ministries asking them to draft the amendments.

There were 339 Acts in effect before the promulgation of the new constitution in 2015. Study showed that 174 of them required to be replaced or amended.

Officials at the ministry said among the 174, the government needs to replace 23 laws while others could be aligned with the provisions of the new constitution.

Dhan Raj Gyawali, spokesperson for the ministry, said the number might change as the ministries are free to merge some of the Acts or come up with additional laws if they think necessary.

According to Article 304 of the constitution, any law inconsistent with it will be invalid to the extent of such inconsistency one year after the first meeting of the federal parliament. In order to avoid the situation of the laws being void, they either need to be replaced or amended in line with the constitution.

As the federal parliament met first on March 5, the final deadline for revising all the laws is March 4, 2019.

The respective ministries should now prepare the amendment drafts and send them to the Law and Finance ministries for review before they are registered in the federal parliament. Since some of the Acts need only minor changes, mainly in their language, said Hum Bahadur KC, deputy spokesperson for the ministry, they could be amended collectively.

Three months before the deadline, commencement of the winter session of Parliament is uncertain due to the lack of agenda.

Though it is the government’s responsibility to give Parliament its business, it has not prepared draft amendments for a single Act that needs to be reviewed. Reminding the government about the time constraint last week, Speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara demanded an atmosphere for convening the winter session immediately.

“I urge the government to come up with the amendment bills at the earliest. We need time for deliberation before their endorsement. Delay in commencing the session means little time for discussion on the bills,” Mahara said.