Nepal may miss key deadline in constitution-drafting process

Nepal's political parties are likely to miss the mid-October deadline for preparing the first draft of a new constitution as stipulated by the country's Constituent Assembly, party leaders said Saturday.

Failure to meet this deadline will cast doubt on whether the country will be able to promulgate the new constitution by Jan 22, 2015, as planned, according to Xinhua.

According to the calendar of the Constituent Assembly, the first draft should be ready within the next couple of days and then be taken to the public for their opinion on its contents. However, differences remain on key issues such as forms of governance, electoral system and judiciary.

The parties had been earlier ordered to settle the issues by the end of September. The deadline has been extended several times since then but the parties still failed to resolve their differences.