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Supreme Court refuses to issue interim order on oath taken by the prime minister on Friday
Oli had not repeated all the words of the oath that the President had read out from a written document. The court has asked the Office of the President and the prime minister’s office to furnish a response within 15 days.Post Report
The Supreme Court has refused to issue an interim order on the writ petitions on the issue of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s oath and reappointment of the seven ministers who are not lawmakers.
However, the Supreme Court has told the Office of the President and the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers to come up with written responses within 15 days regarding the oath taken by the prime minister on Friday.
The order came from the single bench of Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana on Tuesday after preliminary hearing on four different writ petitions demanding that the oath taken by Prime Minister Oli on Friday be annulled because as he refused to repeat all the words President Bidya Devi Bhandari had read out from a written document.
“On the oath of the prime minister and ministers, the final decision will be taken after the written response of the defendants so there is no need to issue an interim order now as demanded by the petitioners,” stated the order of the Supreme Court after its preliminary hearing on Tuesday.
All four writ petitions had demanded that the prime minister take another oath of office and secrecy as it was taken without a proper federal law regarding oath taking in place.
Prime Minister Oli had omitted the word “vow” when the President read out the oath of office and secrecy besides the phrase “in the name of God”.
Senior advocate Chandra Kanta Gyawali and advocates Lokendra Oli and Keshar Jung KC had registered a joint writ while advocates Raj Kumar Suwal, Santosh Bhandari and Nawaraj Adhikary had registered separate writs on the same issue.
The petitioners had said that the prime minister disgraced the office of the President by saying “it is not necessary” when the President had repeated “vow” that Oli had skipped.
They had demanded that all the decisions taken by the prime minister since his swearing in on Friday be declared null and void until he takes the oath again.
Chair of CPN-UML Oli was appointed prime minister on Thursday night as leader of the largest party in the House of Representatives, as per Article 76 (3) of the constitution.
Earlier the President had called on parties in the lower house to form a coalition government as no party has a majority in the 275-member house. But no party staked a claim to form a coalition government.
The petitioners had also demanded the apex court to quash the appointments of seven ministers—Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, Lekhraj Bhatta, Mani Thapa, Ram Bahadur Thapa, Dawa Lama, Gauri Shankar Chaudhary and Prabhu Sah—as they are not the members of the House of Representatives.
But the apex court has not taken any decision regarding the appointments of the seven minister ministers saying the decision would be taken only after the defendants came up with their responses.
All the seven ministers were reappointed on Friday after Oli became prime minister for the third time.
Four of them—Rayamajhi, Bhatta, Chaudhary and Sah—had been reappointed as ministers on April 9 after their party Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) had decided to remove them from the party and Speaker Agni Sapkota informed Parliament on April 8 thus they lost their positions as lawmakers.
Member of the National Assembly Home Minister Thapa was reappointed on April 18, hours after the upper house was informed about his suspension as Maoist Centre’s party member for joining CPN-UML.
Rayamajhi, Bhatta, Chaudhary and Sah had been appointed ministers on December 25 after several ministers resigned in the fallout of the dissolution of the House of Representatives. Thapa Has been a member of the Cabinet since Oli became prime minister in February 2018.