People “unaware” about laws

KATHMANDU: One of the problems in the implementation of the law in the country is found to be ignorance on part of the people about some of the laws made by the legislative parliament.

According to a study conducted by the Nepal Law Society, the implementation of some of the laws is weak due to the lack of adequate publicity about the law among the people.

According to the study report published by the NLS on the contribution made by the federal parliament in law making and the challenges faced by the parliament, out of 152 bills registered in the federal parliament in the last five years, 41 bills have been registered in the National Assembly and 111 bills have been registered in the House of Representatives.

Among them, 90 bills have been certified and seven bills are yet to be certified.

The report mentions that important achievements such as setting the agenda based on party consensus in the Parliament’s Business Advisory Committee, promoting the practice of participatory law making, starting the amendment exercise even from the ruling party and post-legislative examination can be considered as positive progress.

Some challenges that were faced during the first term of the parliament were also a result of ambiguity in the constitutional and legal provisions.

A total of 30 MPs, five subject-matter experts and five members of the parliament secretariat were interviewed for the study.

The study has also shown that parliamentarians in particular are more interested in development issues than drafting laws, focused on party interests, do not study enough when discussing legislation, and just mark their attendance in parliament and leave.

During this period, it is said that the Federal Parliament and the Secretariat had to face challenges such as lack of resources including skilled human resource, lack of interest in the law-making process of the top leaders of the political parties.

Senior Advocate Khimlal Devkota said due to the increasing tendency of running the government administration through circulars, guidelines, procedures, there are deficiencies in running the government according to the provisions of the constitution.