Kathmandu, Aug 27: Nine months after the election of the House of Representatives, the process of selecting the leadership of the parliamentary committees has just started.
In Thursday’s meeting of the House of Representatives, the Speaker had announced that the election of the chairs of all 10 thematic committees has been fixed for Monday afternoon at 3:00 pm. An election program has been published according to which nomination papers can be registered from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm today, said Parliament Secretary Padma Prasad Pandey.
This time, out of the two joint committees and 10 thematic committees under the House of Representatives, the ruling party Nepali Congress has claimed four seats, CPN (Maoist Center) two, CPN (UML) three, CPN (Unified Socialist) one, and Janamat Party one.
Under the House of Representatives there are the Finance Committee, International Relations and Tourism Committee, Industry and Commerce and Labour and Consumer Affairs Committee, Law, Justice and Human Rights Committee, Agricultural Cooperatives and Natural Resources Committee, Women and Social Affairs Committee, State Affairs and Good Governance Committee. Infrastructure Development Committee, Education, Health and Information Technology Committee and Public Accounts Committee will also get new leadership on Monday.
However, fringe parties like Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) and Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) have vowed to contest election. Both the parties have dismissed the decision of three major parties to allocate Committee presidents which has ignored the existence of smaller but new parties.
Meanwhile, the Deputy leader of CPN UML in the House of Representatives, Mr Subash Nemwang, has said that the agreement among three major parties to allocate presidents of House committees looks inappropriate. He said that the President must be given to new parties as well.
