Miscellaneous
Cabinet extends CDC’s tenure by 15 days
The government has extended the tenure of the Constituency Delimitation Commission by 15 days as it failed to submit its report within the given time. The commission received the extension letter on Tuesday following the Cabinet decision of Sunday.The government has extended the tenure of the Constituency Delimitation Commission by 15 days as it failed to submit its report within the given time. The commission received the extension letter on Tuesday following the Cabinet decision of Sunday.
The government had formed the Commission on July 20 to delineate the constituencies for the elections of the provincial assemblies and the federal parliament.
CDC officials claimed that their work was affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling last week that cleared the way for adding local federal units in Province 2. Though the government is preparing to add nine local units in eight Tarai districts, they are yet to be demarcated.
The commission has a huge task of downsizing the existing 240 constituencies to 165. According to the constitution, the five-member CDC has to take into consideration geography and population, for which it first needs to fix the weightage (basis) for delimitation.
“We are close to finalising the weightage,” said Madhav Adhikari, a member of the commission.
Balancing population and geography is the biggest challenge for ensuring proportional representation as some provinces cover a large geographical area but have a low population density.
For instance, Province 6 (having 10 districts) has just 6 percent of the total population (1,623,602), while it covers around 20 percent (27,984 sq km) of the total geography while the scenario is just the opposite in Province 2 (8 districts) which covers around 6 percent (9,661 sq km) of the total geography but has 20 percent (5,404,145) of the population.