By Our Reporter
The first winter session of the federal parliament was expected to finalise a few key bills pending in the House for years and formulate some important laws. But it could not happen and the session of both the House of Representatives and National Assembly was prorogued Friday midnight without formulating a single law in 110 days.
The parliamentary activities derailed after the unlawful dissolution of the House of Representatives by KP Sharma Oli in December 2020 was expected to return to the right track after the elections held on November 20, 2022. But the first session of the new parliament that lasted for 110 days from January 9 to April 28 turned out disappointing. The House completely failed to make laws because of political bickering among the parties like after the dissolution of the previous House.
Although the Supreme Court had reinstated the House dissolved twice by Oli, the reinstated House could not function well as the UML resorted to blocking each move of the government in the House.
Still the enmity between the ruling parties and the UML seems to be affecting the House proceedings.
It is evident from the fact that even the two important bills related to Transitional Justice and Constitutional Council failed to make any headway this time.
Altogether three Bills were tabled in the Lower House and one in the Upper House of the parliament after the November elections and they were sent to the concerned committees on the last day of the session.
Even the political parties have to wait until the last days of the session to form thematic committees, in the absence of which no procedure related to law formulation could move ahead.
The parties even failed to constitute a joint committee including the special parliamentary hearing committee although the National Assembly nominated three members for the committee.
The parties which had agreed to form a special committee to discuss the bill of transitional justice failed to form the committee. The parties also failed to conclude the provisions of the Constitutional Council. The only achievement the House made was the formation of the thematic committees.
Instead of engaging in the task of law formulation, the House of Representatives spent more time forming one government after another as the parties resorted to forming and breaking one coalition after another. Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda had to seek a vote of confidence twice after the first coalition of UML, Maoist-Centre and RPP collapsed before the election of the President. However, the Prime Minister garnered a vote of confidence both times.
Likewise, the parliament succeeded to elect the President, Vice President, Speaker and Deputy Speaker.
As law formulation is the main job of the parliament, it totally failed in its responsibility. As a result, the country could not get Chief Justice in the lack of law.
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