Drafting committee to submit draft of interim constitution by this week

The Interim Constitution Drafting Committee has deferred its programme to hand over the draft of the interim constitution to the talks teams of the government and the CPN (Maoist) until Friday.

Source said that the draft of the interim constitution could not be submitted to the talks teams for approval today because of the public holiday observed on the occasion of Janai Purnima. The committee was scheduled to hand over the draft of the interim statute this evening.

Though there were no official details about arrangements in the interim constitution, reports said the draft has proposed a one-house interim parliament while the fate of monarchy would be decide by the people in the elections to constituent assembly.

The draft has stated nothing as to who will promulgate the interim constitution. It has made provisions according to which new constitution should be introduced within one year from the introduction of interim constitution but the timeline could be extended up to 6 months if extraordinary situation arises.

The drafting committee headed by former Supreme Court Justice Laxman Aryal had been facing tough time finalising the draft as the political parties and Maoists failed to come up with their suggestions in time regarding the matters to be incorporated in the interim constitution.