NCP agrees to first proposal of consensus commission on constitutional reform

The National Citizens Party (NCP) has agreed with the proposal made by the National Consensus Commission that if the constitutional reforms mentioned in the July Charter are not done within a specific period, it will be deemed to have been “adopted” by a constitutional council.

The consensus commission said that even if the council failed to amend the constitution “within the specified time”, the “constitutional amendment will be effective as a law”.

National Consensus Commission Vice-Chairman Ali Riaz presented parts of the recommendations to journalists at a briefing after handing over the recommendations for implementing the charter to Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus on Tuesday.

There were two alternative proposals for constitutional reform. The first of these options included this measure.

On Wednesday, the NCP held a press briefing on the matter and NCP leader Hasnat Abdullah posted a “status” on Facebook regarding it.

He wrote, “The NCP believes that the government should adopt the path of implementing the first draft, i.e. Proposal-1. Because here, Section 8(e) states, if the Constitutional Reform Council fails to complete its work within the stipulated time, the Constitutional Reform Bill will be deemed to have been adopted by the Council and will come into effect as a Constitutional Reform Act.”

“This is an essential recommendation aimed at creating an obligation to implement the mandate of the referendum on the charter, which has precedents in different countries around the world.”

However, the party says that the commission’s first proposal contains various linguistic issues.

Hasnat writes, “On the other hand, the commission’s Proposal-2 does not have any clear statement on this, which could foil the entire reform process.

“That is, not Proposal-2; the government must accept Proposal-1 given by the commission as the implementation outline.”

According to the NCP, “In addition, there is linguistic opacity in several places in Proposal-1 which need to be resolved. For example, it needs to be mentioned that the next elected parliament, as mentioned in Section 8(a), “shall” and not “may” but “will” exercise the constitutional amendment power.

“The provision in Section 8(d) says (authorities/ related parties) “shall consider” the matters of the Constitutional Amendment Bill, which creates a kind of ambiguity that needs to be removed.”

Highlighting NCP’s statement, Hasnat wrote: “We have always said that the July Charter is not just empty rhetoric and a document of political compromise—it must have a legal basis. The NCP will consider signing after seeing the draft of the July Charter Implementation Order—this was our statement.”

“We have noticed that in continuation of the NCP’s uncompromising stance, the National Consensus Commission placed a recommendation outlining the implementation of the July Charter to the government on Tuesday. We believe this was possible only because of the NCP’s firm stance to ensure the legal basis of the July Charter. We also applaud the tireless efforts of the consensus commission.”

Although the NCP did not make any comment regarding the schedule of the referendum, it demanded that the “Constitutional Reform Bill” be “promptly formulated” as a draft and made available to the public.

Hasnat also highlighted the calls made by the NCP to the government at the press briefing.

These are:

1. The legal basis of the July Charter must be ensured by adopting the first draft of the July Charter Implementation Order (Proposal-1) recommended by the National Consensus Commission.
2. Initiatives must be taken to draw a draft constitutional reform bill and open it to the public.
3. NCP believes that progress will be made towards signing the charter if the government accepts the draft order with the legal basis for implementing the July Charter.

The July National Charter, signed by many parties on Oct 17, consolidated a year of political dialogues on restructuring the state and pledged a national commitment to reform.

The charter itself did not specify how reforms would be implemented, prompting the commission to consult political parties with different opinions and experts to devise detailed recommendations. The commission submitted the recommendations to the chief advisor on Tuesday.