House committee chairs to be elected on August 28

KATHMANDU: Parliamentary committees will get their leadership on August 28, more than eight months after the election for the House of Representatives was held.

After holding a Business Advisory Committee meeting on Tuesday, Speaker Dev Raj Ghimire has decided to conduct the election to select the leadership of House committees at 1 am on August 28, according to Shekhar Adhikari, the press advisor to Speaker Ghimire.

Although the committees were formed five months after the election, they are being chaired by the oldest members due to a lack of consensus among parties on the leadership of the committees.

The House of Representatives has 10 thematic committees: Finance; International Relations and Tourism; Industry, Commerce, Labour, and Consumer Interest; Law, Justice, and Human Rights; Agriculture, Cooperative, and Natural Resources; Women and Social; State Affairs and Good Governance; Development and Technology; Education and Health; and Public Accounts. Similarly, there are two joint committees of the National Assembly and the House of Representatives: State Direction Principle, Rules, and Responsibility Committee, and Public Hearing Committee.

Due to the delay in selecting a chairperson, these committees haven’t been able to hold effective discussions on related Bills.

The parties have already reached an understanding for sharing committee chairs. According to the agreement, the Nepali Congress will hold the chairmanship of four committees, UML will preside over three, and CPN (Maoist Center) will lead two. Similarly, the Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP) and CPN (Unified Socialist) will each chair one committee.