The government has decided to register an amendment bill to the Enforced Disappeared Enquiry, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act. A Cabinet meeting held early on Thursday took the decision to register the bill in the House of Representatives.

Despite repeated commitments to amend the Act for years, successive governments haven’t given due priority to it. The incumbent Pushpa Kamal Dahal government is under pressure to amend it after the Supreme Court registered writ petitions seeking criminal investigation against Dahal in the cases of atrocities from the decade-long insurgency.

Following the registration of two separate writs against Dahal at the Supreme Court for insurgency-related crimes, the government has assured to address cases related to transitional justice at the earliest.

Party’s in the alliance are also of the belief that such cases, from the insurgency period, should be addressed as per transitional justice.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons, formed in early 2015, are on the verge of closure due to a lack of office bearers.

In the eight years since their establishment, the commissions have only collected data on missing people. A total of 66,000 cases of missing individuals have been filed at the two commissions, with 63,000 being registered at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, while over 3,000 cases were registered at the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons.

According to the peace accord signed between the government and the Maoist to end the decade-long insurgency, an agreement was reached to strategically resolve all cases related to the insurgency as per transitional justice.

The Interim Constitution 2006 had declared the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission within six months. However, the said commission, along with the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons, was only formed eight years later on 11 February, 2015.