Kathmandu, Nepal, November 23, 2021: Agitating lawyers under the Nepal Bar Association (NBA) have called on different political parties representing in the federal parliament including Speaker Agni Sapkota to oust Chief Justice (CJ) Cholendra Shumsher Rana through the impeachment motion.
As CJ Rana has been refusing to step down as of the demand of the NBA stating that he would not resign rather ready to face the constitutional process, a group of lawyers under the NBA submitted memorandums to the different political parties including Speaker Sapkota on Monday to initiate process to oust him through the impeachment motion.
Though the lawyers have called on the political parties to garner support against CJ Rana, none of the political parties represent in the parliament seems positive on their demand. The political parties, regardless of ruling allies or oppositions, have been stating from the very beginning that the court has to solve its problems on its own but not from the executive and Parliament.
The memorandums were submitted to the main opposition party CPN-UML’s deputy leader of the Parliamentary Party Subhas Nembang, CPN (Maoist Centre)’s chief whip Dev Gurung, Chairmen duo Upendra Yadav and Baburam Bhattarai of Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP) and Parliamentary Party leader Durga Poudel of Rastriya Janamorcha including speaker Sapkota by reaching their respective offices. The lawyers have scheduled to submit similar memorandums to the ruling head Nepali Congress and CPN (United Socialist) today.
During the meeting, the NBA office bearers and lawyers urged the leaders not to remain mum over their strike but to take immediate initiation to oust CJ Rana through the impeachment motion claiming that their demand to oust CJ Rana is nothing than ‘purifying the judiciary.’
Initially, Supreme Court justices had also joining hands in the strike of the lawyers alleging that CJ Rana that he did not show interests to implement the recommendations made by a panel of Justice led by Hari Krishna Karki and to assign cases through the lottery system.
However, the justices have already returned to their work after CJ Rana agreed to assign cases through the lottery system and implement the report recommended by the Karki led panel.
Following the understanding between the Chief Justice Rana and representative agitating SC justice, a full court of SC had on November 18 decided to amend the SC Regulations to assign the cases through the lottery system. The provision has come into implementation after publishing in the Nepal Gazette on Monday itself.
As the CJ Rana has already made clear that he will not resign from the post, the only one remaining option to remove him is impeachment motion. However, the lawyers have been protesting every day in front of the Supreme Court and the NBA stating that Chief Justice Rana’s resignation is their bottom line to end the strike.
As per the constitutional provisions, Chief Justice would remain out of office only if one fourth of members of the parliament register an impeachment motion. However, Chief Justice can return into work if the impeachment motion was not endorsed with two-thirds majority votes.
Since neither the ruling allies nor the oppositions have two third majorities to endorse the impeachment motion, none of the side has dared even to register a motion in the parliament. Division among the political parties on ranges of issues would help CJ Rana to remain in the post for his full term even if the lawyers continue their strike.
There is also no history in Nepal that Chief Justice was ousted from the impeachment motion. Though an impeachment motion was registered against former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, it was quashed from the Supreme Court verdict. Interestingly, CJ Rana’s bench had issed a verdict to scrap the impeachment motion registered against then CJ Karki.
