The decision of President Vidyadevi Bhandari to dissolve the House of Representatives on the orders of Prime Minister KP Oli has been overturned by the Supreme Court. The House of Representatives has been re-established after the Supreme Court decided to dismiss it on Monday afternoon. A bench of Justices Cholendra Shamsher Jabra, Deepak Kumar Karki, Mira Khadka, Ishwori Prasad Khatiwada and Ananda Mohan Bhattarai has also issued a final order to make Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba the Prime Minister as per the petitioner’s demand. At the same time, President Vidyadevi Bhandari has to appoint Nepali Congress President Deuba as the Prime Minister within the next 24 hours.
As soon as the House of Representatives of the court is re-established, an ultimate order has been issued to convene the session within 7 days, i.e. to start by 5 pm on Sunday, July 20, 2078 BS. The court ruled that the dissolution of the House of Representatives was unconstitutional. It has also issued an order not to take any action against those who voted and abandoned the party along with the decision of the Supreme Court. On May 22, President Bhandari called for the submission of a claim with a majority as per Article 76 (5) of the Constitution. On behalf of the Opposition, Sher Bahadur Deuba had submitted the claim with the signatures of 149 MPs. However, he acknowledged that their numbers were not enough to defeat Oli’s government. While 23 UML and 12 Jaspa MPs were in favor of Deuba.
Instead of trying to test the majority claim by both Deuba and Oli, the president decided to dissolve the House of Representatives at midnight on May 20. A writ petition was filed in the Supreme Court by 146 lawmakers along with Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba, demanding the reinstatement of the dissolved House of Representatives by Prime Minister Oli and President Bhandari. They went to court with a joint signature demanding Deuba to be made the prime minister.
The Supreme Court had received 30 petitions regarding the dissolution of the House of Representatives. Of them, 26 were against dissolution and four were petitions seeking the appointment of KP Sharma Oli as the Prime Minister. The writ petitions related to the dissolution were heard continuously in the Constitutional Court of the Dalit Party from June 26 to June 25. Out of the 30 cases, the court has decided the case by giving priority to Deuba’s writ. This was not Oli’s first attempt to dissolve the House of Representatives. He had dissolved the House of Representatives for the first time on Push 5 last year saying that there was a siege against him in the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN). The Supreme Court had reconstituted the House of Representatives on March 26 last year, calling the move unconstitutional. The dissolution of the House of Representatives for the second time has also been annulled by the Supreme Court.
