A meeting of the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives scheduled for Thursday has been postponed due to a lack of quorum.

The meeting called for 1pm was deferred after lawmakers from the main opposition CPN-UML remained absent demanding the election of the committee’s chairperson.

A total of 14 out of total 26 members need to be present for holding the committee’s meeting.

In the previous meeting of the committee, UML members had said that they will not attend the meeting until a chairperson is elected. So far, the committee is chaired by lawmaker Arjun Narasingha KC of Nepali Congress, who is the senior most among the committee members on the basis of age.

Seven months since the first meeting of the House of Representatives, parliamentary committees are yet to get their chairpersons.

The first meeting of the House of Representatives elected by the November 2022 vote was held on January 9 while the House committees were constituted two and a half months later on April 28. However, the committees, also called mini parliaments, are yet to get their leadership. This has adversely affected their performance.

Out of the 16 committees in the federal parliament, the four under the National Assembly have their chairs, but the remaining 12—ten in the lower house and two joint committees with representatives from both houses—are without heads.