On 28th April, 2010, the people of Nepal had elected 601 representatives for drafting a new constitution drafting, and these representatives themselves went to districts and Village Development Committees (VDC) with a bag of questionnaires in order to incorporate people’s opinions in the new constitution. The suggestions (opinions) collection process started on 27th February 2009 with the aim of completing it on 28th March, 2009. During that period, 601 CA members were deployed in various districts by dividing them into 40 groups and distributed 3.4 million 60-page questionnaires; 45 sets of questionnaires to a VDC and 10 sets for the each ward of municipalities.

Based on these questionnaires, the CA members directly collected people’s opinions regarding the major issues such as governance system, model of federalism, inclusiveness, electoral system. According to Subash Nemwang, the CA chairperson, CA members were instructed to make the process as fair as possible avoiding political influences during the people’s opinion collection; however, this instruction was violated, including by CA members from the party in government UCPN(M) to Rastriya Janamorcha Party which opposes federalism. Narayan Kaji Shrestha, CA member of UCPN(M) and vice-chairperson, addressed political meetings in his home district of Gorkha, rather than fulfilling the responsibility of filling up the questionnaires, and Rashmiraj Nepali of Rastriya Janamorcha spent much time speaking against the federalism rather than on opinion collection.

CA members had said that this process will help to build strong relation between people and the Constitution Assembly. Mentioning the strength of this process to understand the ground reality of people, CA member Nabindra Raj Joshi, who was deployed to collect people’s opinions in the capital, said, “People are suggesting in favour of federalism, governance system, peace, prosperity and democracy from diverse perspectives, and these are all helpful to draft the new constitution”.

Similarly, CA member Bishnu Rimal had shared people’s enthusiasm during the opinion collection process in Bhaktapur. According to Rimal, 391 one people had filled up the forms within a day in Chhaling VDC of Bhaktapur district. Rimal mentioned his experiences of personally providing pen and copy to the people who said, “I can’t fill up this long questionnaire, but want to write something”.

The task of opinion collection was totally disrupted in Kailali, Kanchanpur, Banke, Bardiya, Dang, Siraha, Saptari, Sunsari and Rautahat districts, due to the government move of listing Tharu and other indigenous nationalities and minority communities of Tarai under the Madhesi group, and the government decision of opening Western University at Surkhet. According to the Secretariat, the opinion collection process was smooth in other districts.

CA members themselves as enumerator

The responsibility of the Constitution drafting was given to various thematic committees of the CA, following the South African model. Two million people had sent suggestions to the South African Constituent Assembly. In Nepal for the purpose of similar opinion collection, CA members themselves worked to fill up 3.4 million questionnaires in the various districts. However, a number of CA member just ordered the Chief District Officer to collect and send the suggestions without taking forms.

In the beginning, Secretariat staffs had prepared short questionnaires in order to ask only fundamental as well as theoretical concerns regarding the constitution. According to the Secretariat staff, later when the CA members decided to collect suggestion themselves adopting random sampling, then the size of questionnaires was enlarged. In order to ask what should be included in the new constitution, 45 forms for each VDC and 10 forms for each ward of municipality were made available. Secretariat spokesperson Mukunda Sharma said that no outside expert was brought and only the CA members were involved in the process of questionnaire drafting.

Claiming that the forms were prepared by the thematic committees, spokesperson Sharma said, “All the responsibility of questionnaires preparation to form fill up to processing was completed by the CA members, because it is essentially a political process, and it was believed to develop a sense of ownership in the people about the Constitution”. Out of 64 questionnaires, the Committee for Determining the Form of the Government had longest questionnaire and the Committee on State Restructuring and Distribution of State Power has the shortest one.

A number of CA members created disputes on the language issue after they reached to the people, with self-prepared questionnaires. Mohamad Istiyak Rai, a Madhesi CA member, protested on questionnaires not being in Urdu language on 28th February, 2009, at a press meeting in Nepalgunj to inform about the process of opinion collection through media. He was part of the team assigned to Bardiya and Dailekh districts.

On 7th March 2009, through a letter Mahant Thakur, CA member of Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party (TMLP), also had demanded to stop the opinions collection process in Terai districts, by claiming that the indigenous and Madhesi people could not understand the language. However, in the process of questionnaires preparation, Thakur and other CA members from his party had equally participated. Secretariat’s spokesperson Sharma said, “These questionnaires were prepared by them, and the issue of language was not discussed there during the questionnaire preparation”.

Despite the plan that twenty three committees will be led by the chairpersons of the committees of the CA and legislative-parliament, 5 teams by chief whips, and other 12 teams by senior members, the name list was not available in secretariat at that time. The printing cost of questionnaires alone was Rupees 8.5 million in addition to the transportation cost.

Question on the process

No one questions the decision of the CA members to gather opinions of the people before sitting down to write the draft of the new constitution. However, the process and techniques exercised during the opinion collection process were severely criticised. The CA has not found no answer for people suggesting going against the federalism and secularism.

CA members themselves realised questionnaires as unscientific and had agreed on their failure to provide enough information to people. According to Subash Nemwang, CA chairperson, in the beginning, it was planned to give this task to experts, but time constraints forced the CA members to complete themselves. On the one hand, questions asked in the form themselves were complex and lengthy, while on the other hand there was no expertise in the CA in order to assist people opinions coding, analysis to arrive at a conclusion through an objective method.

For that purpose, the Secretariat had planned to request the Central Bureau of Statistics for analysing these data. Finally, the CA members themselves had to do this job after getting the experts’ suggestion that it is impossible to reach any solid conclusion from such long descriptive and emotional opinions. Like a teacher marking a student’s copy, CA members did coding inside their workplace in the CA, and a number of CA members took the work home also.