While the country needs dozens of laws for the full-fledged implementation of the Constitution of Nepal, the Parliament is without business as it is short of bills for deliberations.

In addition to holding the executive accountable, debating and passing bills are the major functions of Parliament. However, after the endorsement of the national budget, both houses of the federal parliament have been mostly limited to special and zero-hour sessions, along with question-and-answer sessions with the prime minister and ministers.

The full House gets business if the government registers new bills or parliamentary committees forward bills after completing deliberations and narrowing down differences among the parties. However, neither has the government registered enough bills, nor have the committees finalised them. As a result, Speaker Devraj Ghimire had to ask the chairpersons of the different committees to complete the deliberations on the pending bills and dispatch them to the full House.

Fifteen bills are under consideration in different House committees, according to Ek Ram Giri, spokesperson at the Parliament Secretariat. The House committees cannot finalise the bills without agreement among the major parties.

Records at the secretariat show that in addition to mandatory budget-related bills, the government has registered just a few new bills since the start of the ongoing session. Similarly, it has endorsed just three bills in this period. The budget session of the federal parliament started on May 10.

Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Ajay Kumar Chaurasia said the government is committed to ensuring Parliament stays busy. “We are working diligently to make the House effective,” he told the Post. New bills are being registered by the government, and the parliamentary committees will forward a couple more within a few days, he said.

The Bill to Amend the Enforced Disappearances Enquiry, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act, and the Bill to Amend Some Nepal Acts, currently under consideration of the Law, Justice and Human Rights Committee, will be forwarded to the House of Representatives within a week, according to Chaurasia. On Thursday, a three-member panel representing the three major parties reached an agreement on the bill related to transitional justice.

Chaurasia said that the Bill to Amend the Bar Council Act will be registered with the secretariat within a week. “Different ministries are in the final stages of finalising various bills. I am confident more bills will be registered during the ongoing session,” he said. The session will last a maximum of two months.

A study by the Legislation Management Committee of the upper house showed only 111 out of the 151 laws needed to implement the 2015 constitution have been enacted. Still, 40 Acts need either significant amendments or replacement with new ones to align with the constitution.

As per the study, the three tiers of government must amend or replace a total of 181 Acts to fully implement the constitution. Of these, 151 fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government, 24 under the provinces, and six under the local level.

In January, the former Pushpa Kamal Dahal government announced it was working on 109 bills, either for new laws or amendments to existing ones. All ministries except the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the government said, were reportedly working on at least one bill and around 35 bills would be registered within a few months. However, the Dahal administration failed to walk the talk.