KATHMANDU, Feb 2: The parliament secretariat has started distributing 'special' badges to 1124 former Constituent Assembly (CA) members for their contribution in drafting the constitution.
Earlier, the second CA, which converted into parliament after the promulgation of the constitution, had endorsed a law just a month before its term provisioning special state recognition for them including a special badge.
Govt starts initiative to reclaim Nepal Sanskrit University lan...
The badge, which was distributed from Thursday, bears the words 'constituent assembly member' on the top of the border, and an image of the constitution and seven busts representing the seven provinces at the center. There are also the sun, moon and rice panicles on the border.
The first CA had 601 members and saw most of the members re-elected to the second CA. The first CA existed between 2008 to 2012 and second between 2013 and 2015.
Spokesperson at the parliament secretariat Bharat Gautam informed that 78 former CA members collected their badges Thursday. Subas Nembang, who chaired both the first and second CA, was the first person to collect the badge followed by CPN-UML Chairman K P Oli.
According to officer at the parliament secretariat, they have yet to notify many former CA members about the badges due to a glitch in the parliament's server. “We will notify them soon by email once the problem is fixed,” he said.
Chudamani BK, a member of the second CA, said that he didn't like the badge for the national flag is missing. “It would have been perfect if there was the national flag,” he told Republica.
Meanwhile, former CA members have expressed discontent over the government decision to put the former CA members in the 15th place in the state's order of precedence. The chiefs of metropolitan cities, former state ministers and assistant ministers also share the same order of precedence. “We have been placed lower than government secretaries and and provincial assembly members. This is not good,” said former lawmaker Rewati Raman Bhandari expressing his ire at the government decision.
