The impeachment recommendation committee has summoned Chief Justice (CJ) Cholendra Shumsher Rana on August 31 for questioning in the impeachment motion against him.
The committee’s meeting on Wednesday has decided to summon him for questioning at 11 am on August 31, according to the committee’s secretary Laxmi Prasad Gautam. The meeting has also endorsed the committee’s working procedure and schedule including that for gathering of evidence.
The committee will have to complete its work within three months.
Lawmakers who had registered the impeachment motion have leveled 21 different charges against the CJ Rana.
A total of 98 ruling HoR members had registered the impeachment motion against CJ Rana on February 13. He has been suspended since then.
CPN (Maoist Center) lawmaker Dev Gurung, who had proposed the impeachment motion along with Pushpa Bhusal of Nepali Congress (NC) and Jeevan Ram Shrestha of CPN (Unified Socialist), had presented the impeachment proposal for discussion in the House on March 13.
Clause 161 of the HoR regulations has set a deadline for each step in a way that speaker cannot sit on the process once an impeachment proposal is registered. Speaker is obliged to set a date for discussion within seven days of registration. If the House session is not on, the House session should be called within 15 days and discussion on the proposal held within three days of the start of session as per the regulations.
But Speaker Sapkota had not held discussion in almost three months after start of the budget session of the federal parliament.