A meeting of the Parliament Regulation Drafting Committee, which was expected to take a decisive step, has been deferred for indefinite period after Nepali Congress lawmakers remained absent on Thursday, citing the election of its Parliamentary Party Working Committee.

After failing to finalise the regulation for the last six months, coordinator of the committee Radheshyam Adhikari, an NC lawmaker, had announced that disputed issues will be resolved through a vote. The Parliament Secretariat had prepared around 75 questionnaires on the disputed issues to be settled through a voting process. However, Adhikari postponed the meeting after NC Chief Whip Chin Kaji Shrestha informed the committee that no lawmaker from his party can participate in the voting process.

“We were busy with nominations for PP Working Committee,” said Shrestha. “The committee has taken this fact into consideration before fixing a date for

voting.”

A total of 42 lawmakers have filed their nominations for the 22 positions on the PP Working Committee, the majority of them are not the members of Regulation Drafting Committee. This is the second time in three weeks that the meeting has been deferred due to the absence of NC lawmakers.

Ruling party lawmakers see this as an NC ploy to derail the regulation drafting process. “NC could have joined the voting process after completing nomination process. They are not cooperating,” said UML lawmaker Krishna Bhakta Pokharel.

As around a dozen lawmakers from the committee, including Adhikari, are leaving for a week-long visit to Japan on Saturday, it is unlikely that the regulation will be finalised anytime soon.

The Legislature-Parliament has been functioning under an interim regulation since the adoption of the new constitution owing to the dispute among the major parties over the new rules.

The drafting committee, which was formed in October last year, has struggled to find consensus even as its deadline has been extended four times. The 61-member committee, comprising a majority of lawmakers from three major parties, is divided over the strength of the Hearing Committee. The NC and some fringe parties are in favour of giving continuity to the 73-member body that existed before the constitution promulgation. The ruling coalition, on the other hand, is pressing for downsizing it to 15 members in line with a provision under the new charter.