Nepal's new Constituent Assembly starts work

Nepal's new Constituent Assembly has started the process of drafting the constitution by taking ownership of the gains of the previous Assembly that was dissolved.
A meeting of the Constituent Assembly (CA) yesterday decided to forward all reports of the 11 thematic committees under the previous Assembly and the political agreements reached among the parties on various occasions to the Constitutional Records Study and Determination Committee (CRSDC), said sources in the Assembly.
General Secretary at the Parliamentary Secretariat Manohar Prasad Bhattarai presented all the decisions and reports of the previous CA to the chairman of the present CA Subas Chandra Nembang at the meeting.

"The process of taking ownership of the work of the previous CA has formally begun. Now, CRSDC will start reviewing the report," Parliament spokesperson Mukunda Sharma said.
"The CRSDC will now review the reports prepared by each thematic committee before forwarding them to the Political Dialogue and Consensus Committee of the new Constituent Assembly," he said.
All the reports approved by the CRSDC and the Political Dialogue and Consensus Committee will then be forwarded to the CA for taking their ownership before they are forwarded again to the constitution drafting committee, he said.

In the process, any disputes surfacing among CA members will be resolved in the Political Dialogue and Consensus Committee which has top leaders of all major political parties.

Except two contentious issues--forms of governance and federal structure--, most of the other matters relating to the constitution drafting had been agreed upon by political parties during the tenure of the first Constituent Assembly.
The process of taking ownership of the reports made by the previous Constituent Assembly is expected to expedite the works relating to promulgation of the new Constitution within the stipulated time frame of one year since the formation of the government one and half months ago.