The government on Thursday formed a five-member Constitution Delineation Commission (CDC) headed by former Supreme Court justice Kamal Narayan Das. 

“A Cabinet meeting today formed the Constituency Delineation Commission, which has been mandated to delineate electoral constituencies for the upcoming provincial and national elections,” said Minister for Finance Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, who is also the government Spokesperson. “Madhav Adhikari, Bishwo Kalyan Parajuli and Ganesh Raj Karki have been named members of the CDC with Begendra Sharma as member secretary,” said Karki.

The government has given the CDC 21 days to carve out constituencies.

As per the constitutional deadline, elections for federal and state parliaments must be held by January 21 next year when the term of the incumbent Parliament expires.

The CDC has to delineate 165 electoral constituencies for federal parliament and 330 for state parliament. 

CDC chief Das, who hails from Siraha, retired as Supreme Court justice some five years ago. Parajuli is a professor of sociology at Prithvi Narayan Campus, Pokhara. 

Similarly, Adhikari is a geographer who earlier served as a member of the Local Level Restructuring Commission (LLRC) headed by Balananda Sharma, which carved out 719 local units earlier this year. Twenty-five local units were added later to take the number to 744.

Similarly, Karki is a retired bureaucrat who served in various government ministries as well as the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority.  Sharma, a government secretary, is the regional administrator based in Pokhara, Kaski. 

The CDC was formed as per Article 286 of the constitution, which states: the government shall form a commission headed by a retired justice of the Supreme Court with respect to the elections to provincial and federal parliaments and one geographer, one sociologist/anthropologist, one expert of administration or law will be its members with a secretary-level serving bureaucrat as member secretary.   

The CDC itself will decide its terms and reference and the delineation should take place on the basis of geography and population. 

As per constitutional provision, any decisions taken by the CDC cannot be raised in any court. 

After receiving CDC’s report, the government should send it to Parliament, which then will forward it to the Election Commission.

The perks and remuneration of the CDC chief and its members would be similar to those of chief election commissioner and election commissioners respectively. 

Members