The Impeachment Recommendation Committee has prepared a draft of its working procedure in the committee’s first meeting on Wednesday. The working procedure will be endorsed at the next meeting, say committee members.

Wednesday’s meeting came 10 days after the House of Representatives sent the impeachment motion against Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana to the committee.

The House of Representatives on August 7 sent the motion to the 11-member committee to probe the charges leveled in the impeachment motion against the suspended chief justice. The committee was constituted on March 6.

“We have prepared the draft of the working procedure which will be endorsed by the next meeting,” Ram Bahadur Bista, a member of the committee, told the Post.

The committee members, mainly those from the CPN-UML, had said the investigation must be completed in a month in view of the upcoming elections.

The committee has four lawmakers from the CPN-UML, two each from the Nepali Congress and the CPN (Maoist Centre) and one each from the CPN (Unified Socialist), the Janata Samajbadi Party and the Loktantrik Samajbadi Party.

Rule 163 of the Regulations of the House of Representatives allows the recommendation committee a maximum of three months, from the day it starts work, to probe the allegations.

As many as 98 lawmakers of the ruling coalition—the Congress, the Maoist Centre and the Unified Socialist—had on February 13 registered the motion against Rana with 21 charges. They claim that Rana had promoted corruption in the judiciary; given access to middlemen in bench surfing, bargained with the executive and failed to discharge his duties effectively, among others.