A new speaker of the House of Representatives (HoR) will have to be elected after incumbent Krishna Bahadur Mahara resigned following allegation of raping a woman working at the parliament secretariat.
Deputy Speaker Shiva Maya Tumbahamphe will chair HoR meeting after Mahara's resignation and will announce the date for election of a new speaker.
The budget session of parliament has already ended and the new speaker will have to be elected in the new session. There is no deadline to elect speaker after resignation of one even though the speaker should be elected within 15 days of the convening of the newly elected parliament.
Tumbahamphe will not get to chair the House meeting if she contests for the post of speaker. She will not have to resign from the post of deputy speaker to contest for speaker though. The post of deputy speaker will be vacant if she wins the election and another deputy speaker will have to be elected.
The ruling CPN cannot contest for speaker if she stays on as deputy speaker as the Constitution requires speaker and deputy speaker to be from different parties. CPN will have to convince her to resign if it wants to keep the post of speaker with the party.
The then CPN (Maoist Center) and CPN-UML had agreed a power sharing arrangement with Mahara from the Maoist Center getting the post of speaker and UML lawmaker Tumbahamphe that of deputy speaker.
She will have to resign if the party decides to give the post of speaker to a former Maoist leader. Former Maoist leaders Dev Gurung, with a legal background, and former speaker Onsari Gharti Magar will be contenders for the position in that scenario.
There are also talks among former UML leaders that chairman of the then Constituent Assembly (CA) Subas Chandra Nembang also wishes to become speaker. Nembang, who can balance both the chairmen KP Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, will have a strong chance of becoming speaker if he makes his wishes known to the party leadership.
It is, however, yet to be known when the winter session of the parliament will be called and when the next speaker will be elected.
