The committee formed to recommend the office bearers for two transitional justice commissions is preparing to complete its work before the deadline.

The panel, which was reconstituted on October 18, has until mid-December to select the one chairperson and four members each for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons. But the former chief justice Om Prakash Mishra-led panel plans to accomplish its task as early as possible.

“We aim to recommend the names before our deadline,” Khamma Bahadur Khati, a member of the panel who also is a former attorney general, told the Post. “The working procedure will be endorsed tomorrow [Sunday]. We will immediately start seeking applications from the aspirants.”

Once the applications are collected, the five-member committee will publish a shortlist of candidates for feedback. “It will recommend candidates for chairpersons and members for the two commissions after evaluating their background and people’s feedback,” reads a provision in the Enforced Disappearances Enquiry, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act.

The provision to seek feedback on shortlisted candidates was inserted during a recent amendment to the Act. After years of delay, the federal parliament in August endorsed the bill to amend the Act. The upper house endorsed the bill on August 22 after it was passed by the House of Representatives on August 14.

Earlier, on April 12, even before the Act was amended, the former government led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal had constituted a committee under Mishra to nominate the candidates in the two commissions. The committee was formed following a ruling from the Supreme Court. But the committee couldn’t take full shape as the National Human Rights Commission NHRC refused to send its representative until the law was revised.

Two months after the Act was amended, the incumbent government reconstituted the Mishra-led committee replacing one of its members. While Arjun Karki, a former ambassador, and Stella Tamang, a rights activist, have been repeated in the new committee, Khati, a former attorney general, replaces Jagdish Sharma Poudel, a retired Supreme Court justice.

Commissioner Manoj Dawadi represents the NHRC in the Mishra committee. While the government picks four members for the committee, the fifth member is either the NHRC chairperson or someone nominated by him/her.

The two commissions have been defunct since July 2022, when the government extended their terms without retaining their chairmen and members. The government claimed the bill to amend the transitional justice law would be endorsed by October 2022, and the appointments would be made based on the revised Act.

However, the federal parliament took over two years to endorse the bill. The victims and human rights defenders are now closely watching who will be appointed to the commissions.

The truth commission has received 63,718 complaints, while the commission on disappearances is sitting on around 2,400 cases. The new teams will have four years to accomplish their tasks, though there are provisions for their extension. The commissions, first formed in 2015, have done little beyond collecting complaints and conducting preliminary investigations on some cases.

As the process starts to select the candidates for the transitional justice commission, the conflict victims and national and international human rights organisations have been demanding a transparent and credible selection process and that competent people get selected on merit. They are also demanding a public hearing of the candidates before their nomination.

The amended Act sets four years’ time for the two transitional commissions to investigate the cases and recommend prosecution and reparation. However, there is a possibility of extension if they fail to accomplish their job.