Hearing on House dissolution case underway at SC

KATHMANDU: The Constitutional bench of the Supreme Court (SC) is hearing the case against the dissolution of the House of Representatives.

The hearing, which started in the Constitutional Bench on Friday, was scheduled for today.

The debate began on Friday with a bench comprising Chief Justice Cholendra Shamsher Rana, Justices Deepak Kumar Karki, Ananda Mohan Bhattarai, Tej Bahadur KC and Bam Kumar Shrestha.

CJ Rana had ordered to send the writ petitions to the constitutional bench on Friday.

The hearing was adjourned until Sunday after lawyer Govinda Bandi had questioned the formation of the constitutional bench on Friday.

On Sunday, advocates, including Bandi questioned the involvement of Justice Bam Kumar Shrestha in the constitutional bench to hear the writ petition against the dissolution of the parliament.

Advocate Bandi, who came to the court to argue on behalf of the writ petitioner, questioned the composition of the bench.

He had raised similar question in the debate on the first day on Friday.

Chief Justice Cholendra Shamsher Rana asked Bandi how long the debate would take.

Out of 30 writs, 19 have been filed seeking an interim order on the HoR dissolution while 11 writ petitions have been filed demanding that the writs should be heard through the Constitutional Bench.

Most of the cases have been filed demanding the reinstatement of the HoR while a few of them have been filed in favor of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli seeking timely conduction of the elections.

After President Bidya Devi Bhandari ruled that there was no basis for the appointment of the Prime Minister as per Article 76 (5), the parliament was dissolved last week by the President on the recommendation of the Council of Ministers and the date of the election was fixed on November 12 and 19.

Stating that the dissolution of the parliament was unconstitutional, as many as 146 lawmakers had on Monday filed a writ petition at the apex court demanding the appointment of Sher Bahadur Deuba as the prime minister as per Article 76 (5) of the Constitution.