Kathmandu, Purba nyayadish ko netritwo ma samiti gathan. The government on Monday formed a four-member Recommendation Committee under former Chief Justice Om Bhakta Shrestha to expedite the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Advocate Sapana Malla Pradhan and rights activists Pradeep Pokharel and Ghanashyam Lal Das are members of the committee. Malla is a former Constituent Assembly member from the CPN-UML, Pokharel is the chairperson of Human Development and Peace Campaign, a rights organisation close to UCPN (Maoist), and Das is a professor at Mahendra Morang Campus. The major parties had agreed to form the committee without the fifth member representing the National Human Rights Commission. The TRC law requires the NHRC chairperson or a member as designated by the chairperson to be on the committee that will choose the chairperson and members of the TRC . Although all the five NHRC posts, including chairperson, have been lying vacant since September 2013, the Constitutional Council has not initiated the process to fill the vacancies. The Cabinet took the decision without making appointments to the NHRC. “The decision was made out of compulsion,” said UML leader Pradeep Gyawali. “We can no longer put on hold the TRC formation.” Rights advocates said the committee formation process is dominated by party politics. “The government handpicked committee members from representatives of major political parties,” said rights advocate Govinda Bandi. He argued that the government should have waited for a Supreme Court verdict on the petition filed by conflict victims. On June 4, a total of 234 victims from both rebel and state sides challenged the newly- enacted TRC law, claiming the amnesty and reconciliation provisions contravene the apex court ruling of January last year. The SC is set to begin a hearing on the petition on July 10. “I don’t see any legal, logical and rational ground for the government’s hasty decision to form the committee,” said Bandi. The victims, however, welcomed the government move. “We want the TRC to be formed at the earliest,” said Suman Adhikari, lead petitioner representing the victims. “We want the committee to nominate trustworthy people—not politicians—in the TRC .”