Amid growing fears of a constitutional crisis and chaos in Nepal, the government on Saturday ruled out the imposition of an emergency rule with the deadlocked political parties set to miss a key deadline for the promulgation of a new Constitution at the end of May.
Nepalese political leaders are set to miss a May 28 deadline to finish the drafting of a new Constitution as stipulated by the 2006 peace process that ended the decade-long civil war by the Maoists.
Leaders of the three major political parties — main Opposition CPN-Maoist, the Nepali Congress and the Prime Minister’s Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist) — have held separate meetings but failed to reach an agreement to end the standoff that threatens the country’s peace process.
Information and communication minister Shanker Pokharel, who is also the government spokesman, said there will be no emergency rule in the country even after the Constituent Assembly’s term expires on May 28. Even if the political parties fail to reach an understanding to extend the tenure of the 601-member Constituent Assembly, the government will not be dissolved and the status quo will be maintained, he underlined. —PTI