While the SC has announced that it will commence hearings on parliament member counting policy case on Feb 25, the parliament has, on Thursday, revoked the articles being considered under the case, and moved the concerned clause to another existing article.
While the Supreme Court has accepted the Attorney General's case against the amendments to the Parliament regulations on counting total number of parliamentarian which the case claimed as unconstitutional, the Parliament's General Purposes Committee has decided to remove those three specific clauses that are under consideration of the Supreme Court, and to instead include the matter of counting total number of parliamentarians in a separate existing article of the regulations.
Last year's amendment's stipulated that the total number of MPs would be counted without including any constituency if the representative seat has fallen vacant.
When seven members of parliament resigned from their posts after being appointed to positions in the new administration, the total strength of the current session of parliament came down from 87 to 80. The quorum of parliament sittings has also come down.
The Attorney General had moved to the apex court seeking quashing of the three articles added to Article 49 of the Parliament Regulations, maintaining that the phrasing of "total number of parliamentarians" mentioned in these three articles is in contravention of the Constitution's Article 71.
After the Supreme Court issued an interim stay order on the implementation of these articles and scheduled the hearings for this case on February 25, the General Committee of Parliament on Thursday approved the removal of these three articles from the rules.
Instead, the committee approved adding a clause to Article 242, that while counting the total number of members, vacant seats will not be counted if there is not sufficient time, as stated in law, remaining in a term for another member to be elected to the seat.
"As per Article 78 of the Constitution, in the event that a member of the parliament cannot be elected to a vacant seat due to there being a period of six months or less till the next parliamentary election, hence not allowing for the election of a new member within this period, the empty seat will not be included when counting the total number of parliamentarians."
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