HoR to initiate process for picking new speaker on December 27

Kathmandu / Dec. 20: A meeting of the House of Representatives (HOR) to be held on December 27 will initiate a parliamentary process for picking a new speaker of the House.

The meeting of the HoR is taking place at 11 am on December 27. The post of the speaker has been lying vacant after the resignation of Krishna Bahadur Mahara over a rape allegation.

Since then, both the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) and the main opposition Nepali Congress (NC) are staking their claims to the top position in the legislature.

As of now, it is far from clear who will get the coveted post and the large parties are working on strategy to bring in their own man or woman. The opposition party has demanded that the position of either speaker or deputy speaker should be given to it as per the constitutional provision under which the speaker and deputy speaker should be from different political parties.

“The election under clause (1) shall be so held that there is one woman as either Speaker or Deputy Speaker, and the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives shall be representatives from different parties,” states the constitution.

Outgoing speaker Mahara represented the then CPN (Maoist Center) and the current deputy speaker, Shivamaya Tumbahamphe, was from the former CPN-UML at the time of their election. Later, the two parties were merged to form the NCP. But the ruling party refused to make any changes to the two posts, arguing that they were no longer with any party as they had already resigned their party positions immediately after being elected speaker and deputy speaker.

With a deputy speaker from the NCP already in place, the opposition NC has claimed that the post of speaker should automatically be someone from its fold.