‘President can’t ask for majority to form govt under Article 76 (5)’

KATHMANDU, May 22: Constitution expert and senior advocate Dr Chandra Kanta Gyawali has said that it was a wrong call of President Bidya Devi Bhandari to ask the lawmakers to show the support of majority in parliament while staking claim for the formation of a new government as per Article 76 (5) of the Constitution of Nepal. 

Talking to Ratopati hours after the President, at the recommendation of the Council of Ministers, dissolved the House of Representatives (HoR), Dr Gyawali said that Prime Minister’s KP Sharma Oli’s claim for new government formation on Friday, too, was also unconstitutional. “He [PM Oli] had once lost a trust vote from parliament on May 10. As he said that the government recommended to the president citing that it could not win a trust vote amid the contemporary political situation, he should not have staked a claim for a new government on Friday.”

According to Gyawali, President Bhandari should have sought a majority, instead should have approved the claim submitted by the alliance of opposition parties. 

“On the one hand, the Prime Minister had failed to get a vote of confidence, on the other hand, the leader of the main opposition staked a claim with the support from 149. In that situation, the president should have called the leader of the opposition party to form an alternative government,” said he, adding that the prime minister elected under Article 76 (5) must take a vote of confidence in the House of Representatives within 30 days of his/her appointment. 

Senior advocate Gyawali also argued that the political parties can not issue whip to the lawmakers as each member of parliament is entitled with the right to stake claim for new government formation as per Article 76 (5). “The parties can take action or issue a whip once the process of trust vote begins in parliament,” he said. 

It is to be noted that President Bhandari dissolved the lower house of parliament as per Article 76 (7) and announced fresh parliamentary elections for November 12 and 19 upon the recommendation of Cabinet meeting held on Friday midnight.

Earlier, Bhandari rejected the claims staked for the new government formation as per Article 76 (5). Nepali Congress (NC) President Sher Bahadur Deuba and Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli claimed to have the support of a majority of lawmakers in parliament. While PM Oli said that as many as 153 lawmakers --- 121 from the UML and 32 from the Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP) --- supported him for new government formation, Deuba also claimed to have support of 149 lawmakers --- 61 from NC, 49 from CPN (Maoist Center), 26 from ruling CPN-UML’s Madhav Nepal faction, 12 from Janata Samajbadi Party’s Upendra Yadav faction and an independent lawmaker. The claims from both the leaders were rejected citing the lack of strong bases for new government formation as per Article 76 (5).