The Supreme Court, through an interim order, has temporarily halted the implementation of two provisions of the House of Representatives’ Rules, 2026, that placed the Rules above the Constitution. The interim order has stopped the controversial provisions that the ruling Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), which commands nearly two-thirds of the seats in the House, had forced through. 

The controversial Rules 140(11) and 259, passed by the lower house on May 31, attempted to allow a combined aggregate two-thirds vote of both houses to certify constitutional amendment bills and render the Rules as special federal laws. The first provision would ease the path to constitution amendment for the RSP, which holds not a single seat in the National Assembly, by allowing it, with a handful of allied parties on board, to muster an overall two-thirds majority. The second provision granted the Rules the status of special federal law, acquiring a standing above other legislation, a status that could place members of the lower house beyond the reach of the law. 

A legislative institution may frame its own rules of procedure, but under a bicameral parliamentary system, both Houses share joint responsibility for lawmaking. Within constitutional and democratic norms, the public judges institutions by how well they discharge their responsibilities, not by how much authority they place in themselves. For a single House to pass rules conferring extraordinary power upon itself thus runs contrary to constitutional and democratic principle.

These two provisions of the House Rules convey a message that extends further still. Whenever an individual or a party rises to dominance in politics, that dominant force tends to disregard other parties, established procedures, constitutional checks and balances, court rulings and the media alike, as obstacles. Such a force also tends to nurture the illusion that it alone represents the final authority. 

Consider the Maoists, the largest party after the first Constituent Assembly election, and their chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, or the CPN-UML (which merged for a time into the NCP), which grew powerful after the 2017 election, along with its chairman KP Sharma Oli. Excessive arrogance marked both their rhetoric and their conduct. It was precisely this kind of power and arrogance that drove Oli to dissolve parliament unconstitutionally, not once but twice. The RSP would do well not to repeat this tendency.

By halting, for the present, the implementation of provisions in the House Rules, the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the spirit of the Constitution. Whatever that final verdict eventually holds, the RSP must reckon with two central questions: Will it put the mandate entrusted to it to proper use, or misuse it? Will it turn the nearly two-thirds of seats it holds in the House into a means of fulfilling public expectation, or into an instrument of abuse?

History offers a clear lesson: Those who mistake their power for entitlement rather than responsibility, who fail to grasp how fleeting power is in politics, and who presume that power licenses any conduct, have invariably met their downfall. No party holds the final word for the people. Public judgement continues without pause, and every party must prove itself worthy of that judgement, every day and at every step. The provisions of the House Rules ought, in truth, to have remained a routine matter, yet these two contentious clauses have laid bare the RSP’s intent. 

The Supreme Court has, at this juncture, delivered a timely message, one that the RSP ought to take as a lesson. The RSP must now take the lead in bringing the disputed provisions of the Rules in line with the Constitution. Doing so must start with an extensive debate in the House. And the culture of parliamentary debate must extend beyond this particular case to all bills tabled in the House.