12.5 Responsibility and Accountability of the Council of Ministers

The dual accountability of the parliamentary state: (a) Collective responsibility to the Federal Parliament (Article 76(10)): the Council stands or falls together — the confidence/no-confidence machinery of Article 100 (the PM may seek confidence; must do so within 30 days on party fragmentation or coalition withdrawal; a no- confidence motion — one-quarter of members in writing, naming the alternative PM, barred in the PM's first two years and for one year after a failed motion — passes by majority of the total House and installs the named member as PM); (b) Personal accountability of ministers: to the Prime Minister (appointment-and-removal at the PM's hand — Article 77(2)) and individually to Parliament (questions, debates, committee scrutiny — Unit 11's control machinery); (c) Legal accountability: the Council's acts are executive acts — reviewable for legality and constitutionality (the Supreme Court's jurisdiction — Articles 133–134; Unit 13); the work-division regulations' observance alone is non-justiciable (Article 82 — the allocation of portfolios is politics, not law); (d) The answer-document machinery: ministries' and constitutional bodies' annual reports; the President's addresses (Article 95) as the government's programme statements. The essay line: the Council of Ministers is powerful because it is responsible — the confidence leash in exchange for agenda leadership; when the leash is cut (two-year no-confidence bars, dissolution threats), the design's tension resurfaces. Nepal's 2015…