BIMSTEC Charter
The National Assembly today conducted the third reading on the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) Charter. The Chairperson of the Social and Cultural Committee, Hon’ble Yeshey Dem presented the Committee’s 61 recommendations on the Charter of which majority were reported as clerical changes and translations. The Chairperson further submitted about the Committee’s consultative meetings before coming up with the recommendations.
The House through majority show of hands approved all the recommendations of the Committee except for one section under Preamble regarding the names of the BIMSTEC member countries. The members had varying opinions on the spellings on the use of the names of the countries in the Charter. The Speaker recommended the committee to take stock of all the suggestions and come up with standard names of the countries to be included in the Charter and present to the House tomorrow before adoption. The members also discussed on the appropriate translation of the nomenclature “Charter’ in Dzongkha and after much deliberation a Dzongkha term “Koedthrim” was adopted. The House also passed all the 36 Articles of the BIMSTEC Charter through a majority show of hands.
The Charter will be put to vote for ratification tomorrow, 13th June 2023.
