Nepal PM meets leaders to decide on drafting Constitution

Prime Minister Sushil Koirala today held a high level meeting with top leaders of major political parties to develop common views on key contentious issues in the constitution-drafting of the country.
Koirala met CPN-UML chairman KP Sharma Oli, UCPN-Maoist chief Prachanda and Nepali Congress vice-president Ramchandra Poudyal to sort out differences in the drafting of Constitution.
The leaders, so far has failed to forge consensus on the contentious issues of the Constitution drafting.
As the extended deadline of resolving contentious issues of the new Constitution is expiring on November 1, the three major parties are making a last attempt to forge consensus on key issues of the Constitution drafting before adopting a voting process to settle the disputes.

The deliberations were focused on considering a collective understanding on two key contentious issues-number of federal states and forms of government. Other two contentious issues are electoral system and judiciary system.
The leaders of the ruling party said that the issues will be put to the vote if they failed to find a common ground.

In sharp contrast to this UCPN-Maoist is opposed to the voting process saying that key issues should be settled through consensus among the major parties.
The combined strength of the ruling alliances Nepali Congress and CPN-UML make two third majority of the total strength of 601 members in the Constituent Assembly. The third largest party UCPN-Maoist has just the strength of 84 seats in the CA.

During their meeting the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML have reached a common understanding of dividing the country into six to seven federal units including two such units in the Terai region.
However, the UCPN-Maoist is stressing on increasing the federal units up to 13, which is one of the key issues that needs to be settled among the three major parties.
Political parties, which pledged during the second Constituent Assembly elections, have set January 22 as deadline to draft the Constitution so as to institutionalise the achievements of the Peoples Movement of 2006.
Political instability has plagued Nepal since the end of the civil war in 2006.

Politicians have yet to agree on a new Constitution - a key part of the peace deal with the Maoists - and are at odds over proposals to divide Nepal into states, along ethnic lines.