Kathmandu, April 7
With the government recommending the end of the ongoing session of the Federal Parliament, President Bidya Devi Bhandari announced that both the House of Representatives and the National Assembly have been prorogued after Monday midnight.
Consequently, the session ended without fulfilling its business.
Conventionally, there are two sessions of Parliament in a year in Nepal. One session is dedicated to endorsing the government’s annual policy and programme and budget plan. Because the process takes months due to several objections of opposition parties, the session cannot look after other bills. Hence, the other session discusses many bills. Therefore, the second session is also known as the ‘bill session’.
However, in four months of this bill session, Parliament only endorsed four bills. In the first month of its business, the House of Representatives was busy electing the new speaker to fill the vacuum created by the resignation of Krishna Bahadur Mahara.
Likewise, the meetings could not be held in the last month also due to the fear of coronavirus outbreak. As the fear escalated, the government announced a nationwide lockdown, forcing the Federal Parliament Secretariat to put off meetings of both houses time and again.
The next House of Representatives meeting was scheduled to be held next week whereas the National Assembly meeting was postponed indefinitely. But with the government decision, both the meetings have been cancelled.
