To institutionalise democracy, it is not only the representatives of the people but also participation of the people is also required. For a constitution that is drafted after struggle, revolution and people’s movement, it is imperative that people’s feelings and aspirations are met through interactions and meetings with them to collect their suggestions during the constitution-drafting process. To reflect the people’s aspirations after the People’s Movement II, opinions were collected by the 10 thematic committees and the constitutional committee. The collection process itself was coordinated by the Public Opinion Collection and Coordination Committee.

A total of 40 teams comprising of CA members were involved in the opinion‑collection process. This process got completed though it was a challenge to prepare the questionnaires, fill them in the districts, collect them and study them to get the results at the end. This also raised some questions regarding the format of the questionnaires, filling process, its analysis and usefulness.

Some of the questions pertained to the sampling process, misspellings, CA members not being serious while filling out the questionnaires or employing the low-ranking officials to fill out the forms which raised the complaints of carelessness. Questions were raised regarding the inclusion of closed-ended questions and their non-analysis by the Committee and also the lack of analytical framework for open-ended questions. However, this Committee had played important role in establishing a mechanism for collection opinions from the central to the local level, collecting suggestions from the media, coordinating with other institutions and organisations to conduct discussion a the local level.

Working area of the Committee

Committee on Citizens is one of the three procedural committees formed to assist in the administrative and procedural work in the CA. basically, the working area of all the committees were defined where they were tasked with ease of access of the general people to the CA and coordination of effective communication regarding the constitution-drafting process and its activities among different stakeholders.

The Committee also had the responsibility to monitor and evaluate activities of the state, NGOs and INGOs, civil society and media regarding the CA, constitution-drafting process and its regular activities; to inform the citizens the process of participating in eh constitution-drafting process; to monitor the media centre.

Work plan of the Committee

The Committee had prepared a clear mandate for itself to make its work more effective and manageable. It had planned to establish and manage an information centre. It had also planned to collect and disseminate information from the CA as well as request for general people’s participation in the constitution-drafting through different media. It had also aimed to collect information through making people aware through the government media as well as different media, pamphlets, hoarding boards by inviting people to submit suggestions and opinions.
It had also prepared a draft to develop the capacity of the staff within the Committee and related officials. Its another objective was to coordinate government and public intuitions for collecting suggestions, under which to inform the public, NGOs and INGOS, private institutions, professional bodies, civil societies and citizens organisations were also involved.

The Committee had planned to establish a website/email to disseminate the activities of the Constituent Assembly and to encourage participation in constitution-drafting to collect suggestions as well. It included the establishment of centres, asking the chief district officers to coordinate the efforts, conducting discussion programmes from the central to the local level, running a hotline number and fax, and also collecting suggestions from Nepali in foreign countries.

The Committee had planned to collect, classify and forward the suggestions from the general populace, civil society, professional association, students, farmers, labours, religious, sportspersons and disabled associations/groups, NGOs, community organisations, civil society organisations and various federations, women’s’, indigenous, Janajati, Dalit, Muslim, Madhesi, backward and marginalised area, human rights activists to respective committees. In addition, its responsibility also included monitoring of the media centre, documentation and updating the collected suggestions.

Its responsibility increased more than it had planned. The meeting of January 23, 2009 between the CA Chairperson and different committee chairpersons also decided to give additional responsibility to this Committee, which included establishing a mechanism from the district to the local level and identifying persons and organisations. Also, it was also tasked with formation of a mechanism that included district-level NGOs, clubs, communities, active political parties and their sister organisations, representatives from women, Dalit, Muslim and minorities, active professional organisations, federations, indigenous social institutions. It also had the responsibility of conducting seminars, workshops and discussion programmes in the districts, electoral constituencies and villages.

What did the Committee do?

The Committee set up two opinion collection boxes at the western and southern gates of the Singha Durbar to collect suggestions from the public for constitution-drafting process. Another one was placed at the western gate of the CA building in New Baneshwor. There was a provision to forward details to this Committee of all the meetings and activities in different committees and the Committee gathered information from other committees. Experts were called in to discuss the role of the Committee and different ministries were consulted to seek their support in making the public opinion collection process regarding the constitution drafting more effective. The Committee also issued public service announcement in the media urging public participation in the constitution-drafting process. The Committee also gathered suggestions from districts with the chief district officer coordinating the heads of different government offices, representatives of political parties, VDC secretaries, and journalists.

The Committee had directed all the district government offices to establish a contact office and set up suggestion boxes to collect suggestion regarding constitution drafting. It had also conducted several discussion sessions with media houses on making the constitution-drafting process accessible to the general populace.

To ensure ease of access of general people on the constitution-drafting process, the Committee had held interaction programmes with officials from different organisations, experts and civil society; formed a mechanism to collect suggestions from central to district level; directed the ministries and relevant organisations to assist the 40 CA teams going to collect the opinions from the people. The Committee had forwarded the suggestions received through the CA teams, different organisations, individuals and toll-free number to respective committees. Altogether, it had received 549,763 suggestions.

A dispute arose between the Committee on Citizens and the Public Opinion Collection and Coordination Committee. Some members of the Public Opinion Collection and Coordination Committee objected to the suggestion collection by the Citizen Relations Committee. The dispute was settled only after it was clarified that the Committee on Citizens’ role would be during the drafting of the constitution and the Public Opinion Collection and Coordination Committee would have additional responsibility after the draft has been prepared. A meeting of the CA and chairs of different committees settled the dispute.

Source: Committee on Citizen

Table: Details of suggestions received and sent to thematic committees