After the major political parties failed to reach consensus on disputed issues of the constitution despite several meetings, the Constitutional Committee (CC) has decided to use a voting process for the purpose on Wednesday. The decision was taken on recommendation of top leaders of the major political parties.
Committee chairman Nilambar Acharya said that a meeting of the CC would be held at 8 am on Thursday to move ahead the voting process. Acharya stated that the CC has received a report with 170 contentious issues and that these points would be removed from the list of disputed issues if agreement was made on them until Thursday morning. The CC meeting on Thursday would forward the disputed issues to the Constituent Assembly.
Chairman of the UCPN-Maoist Pushpa Kamal Dahal said that efforts to reach consensus would be continued while at the same time moving ahead the process. "Until now the responsibility of resolving the contentious issues of the constitution rested on some leaders only, henceforth this responsibility has shifted on the shoulders of 601 CA members," he said.
President of the CPN-UML Jhalanath Khanal said the report prepared by the Dispute Resolution Sub-committee was presented in the CC meeting and a decision has been taken to simultaneously take forward the process of seeking consensus and going for the due process.
Nepali Congress vice-president Ram Chandra Paudel said the parties have decided to proceed ahead with both the processes- seeking consensus and going ahead with the voting process- as they could not forge consensus despite extending the sub-committee's term time and again.
"We are ready to be soft to some degree on the forms of governance but cannot accept federalism based on singular ethnicity," he added.