After five days of deliberation, Constituent Assembly (CA) on Tuesday passed the preliminary draft of the new constitution.
The draft will now be published in the Nepal gazette for public consultations. After incorporating suggestions collected from the public, the draft will be revised and presented at the CA yet again. The CA aims to pass the new constitution in one month's time. To fast-track the drafting process, the CA is suspending several clauses of the CA Rules of Procedure.
Deliberation on the draft was halted on the first day by the Hindu Royalist RPP-N, which had objected to a provision of religious freedom. But the RPP-N allowed the CA to proceed after the top three major parties agreed to not define it as 'rights to religious conversion'.
Prime Minister Sushil Koirala said endorsement of the preliminary draft by the CA was a historic moment. "No one now needs to have speculations over the promulgation of the new constitution," he said.
UML Chair KP Oli said, "The new constitution institutionalises federal democratic republic and ends inequality and discrimination."
UCPN (Maoist) Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal said, "We all have sacrificed some of our stances to write people's constitution."