JUL 23 - The Committee on Citizen Relations and Public Opinion Collection has sought more time for analysing and processing feedback provided by public and various organisations on the draft constitution. The committee said it would take another 3-5 days to prepare a report.
The committee was supposed to submit the report at full House of the Constituent Assembly (CA) on Thursday for deliberations among political parties.
But committee members said it would be difficult to prepare the report within the allotted time due to a large volume of suggestions collected from electoral constituencies, via website, email and direct mail.
They met CA Chairman Subas Nembang on Wednesday and requested for additional time. “CA chairman has directed us to complete the tasks by tomorrow. If that is not possible, he has hinted to extend the deadline by a couple of days,” said committee member Prabha Devi Bajracharaya.
According to her, the committee will come up with the document by Sunday. Only the CA is mandated to extend the deadline for the committee.
Lawmakers, who attended the consultations around the Kathmandu valley, have already returned with the feedback, while those who went to the rural areas are yet to report back to the Capital. But CA staffers, who were deployed to 240 electoral constituencies, have already forwarded the feedback they gathered from the people there to the CA Secretariat.
Besides those gathered from 240 electoral constituencies, 33,016 suggestions had been collected until Tuesday midnight—the deadline to submit suggestions on the draft constitution. According to the committee, 20,722 pieces of suggestions were collected through website, while 8,800 from email, 2,471 from toll-free number, 1,080 (fax) and 243 (direct mail).
State mechanisms, provisional organisations, non-government organisations, among other stakeholders, have submitted their feedback directly to the CA chairman.
Most of the feedback, Bajracharaya explained, were in favour of religious freedom, with many also demanding the new constitution be promulgated only after the demarcation of federal units. During the consultation process, a large section of population was found to be in favour of a directly-elected executive—either prime minister or president.
After the committee presents the report to full House of the CA, it will be forwarded to the Political Dialogue and Consensus Committee. Political parties had announced that the new constitution would be promulgated through “fast track” by mid-August.
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