Nepal to get new constitution on Sunday

Nepal is all set to promulgate a new constitution this Sunday, officials confirmed on Monday.

Nepalese President Ram Baran Yadav will unveil the post-war constitution at 5 p.m. local time, Assistant Spokesman at the Constituent Assembly (CA) Sudarshan Kuinkel told reporters on Monday.

According to Kuinkel, Chairman of the Constituent Assembly Subhas Nembang will extend a formal invitation to President Yadav for unveiling the much-awaited new constitution in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu.

According to the timeline set by the Constituent Assembly Secretariat, Constituent Assembly Chairman Subhas Nembang will certify the constitution before the president unveils the main charter.

This is going to be a first full-fledged constitution in the Himalayan nation after it became a democratic republic in 2008. Previously, an interim constitution has been issued in 2007.

Nepali parties had started work on the new national constitution in 2008, two years after the end of the ten-year-long civil war that killed around 14,000 people.

Nepal's constitution-making body, the 601-member Constitution Assembly, on Sunday started a clause-wise voting process on the constitution bill despite protests over the new constitution in Southern plains of the country in the past month.

The voting is expected to be concluded Saturday, according to officials at the CA secretariat.

About a month ago, Nepal's three major political parties -- the Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and UCPN (Maoist), agreed to federate the country into seven states.

However, political parties from southern region of the country have been objecting bringing out the new constitution without their consent.

"We will not accept the new constitution at all. Our only one option is to intensify our ongoing agitation programs since the major parties didn't pay heed to our demands," a leader of the agitating Sadhbhawana party, Rajendra Mahato, told reporters on Monday.

Source: XINHUA