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Three lawmakers from the National Assembly have been nominated for the Parliamentary Hearing Committee. A meeting of the National Assembly held on Wednesday decided to nominate lawmakers Jug Prasad Sharma, Devendra Dahal and Ramesh Jung Rayamajhi to the committee. They were nominated as per the recommendation of National Assembly Chairman Ganesh Prasad Timilsina. There is a provision to have a Parliamentary Committee to hear the names proposed for the appointment to the posts of Chief Justice, Supreme Court judges, Judicial Council members or officials of the constitutional bodies and ambassadors. The committee should have a total of 15 members—12 from the House of Representatives and three from the National Assembly.  

Police have arrested a man for trying to attack CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli on Wednesday. The former prime minister was heading towards Jhapa to take part in a program when the man pelted stones at him. Two policemen were injured in the attack. Home Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha informed the Parliament that the police nabbed a person who attacked UML Chairman Oli. Speaking at a Parliament meeting today, UML Chief Whip Padam Giri said that a person tried to attack UML Chair Oli while he was heading towards Jhapa from Kathmandu to participate in a program.  

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and National Assembly (NA) Chairman Ganesh Prasad Timilsina held a meeting on Wednesday During the meeting took place at the Prime Minister's official residence in Baluwatar, the upper house Chair briefed the head-of-the-government of his recent visit to Russia at the invitation of Speaker of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation Valentina Matvienko. On the occasion, discussions were held on endorsing the Bill relating to the Constitutional Council and proroguing the House session soon, according to the NA Chair's Secretariat.  

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, acting Chief Justice Hari Krishna Karki and Finance Minister Prakash Saran Mahat held a meeting on Wednesday. Finance Minister Mahat said so during a meeting of the National Assembly today. The trio held the meeting in Singha Durbar before formulation of the budget.  

The Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) plunged by 13. 68 points to close at 1,892.00 points on Wednesday. Similarly, the sensitive index dropped by 2. 11 points to close at 361. 55 points. A total of 2,571,202-unit shares of 264 companies were traded for Rs 847 billion. Meanwhile, Janautthan Samudayic Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha Limited was the top gainer today with its price surging by 3. 25 percent. Likewise, Sunrise Bluechip Fund was the top loser with its price dropped by 9. 12 percent. At the end of the day, the total market capitalization stood at Rs 2. 75 trillion.

More than three dozen of the local governments lying along the Kaligandaki River have gone violating the Supreme Court (SC) order by extracting river based natural products worth millions annually. However, the illegal activities operated by the local units are unchecked even if they are visible to the stakeholders. The Kali Gandaki river passes through Mustang, Myagdi, Baglung, Parbat, Syangja, Gulmi, Palpa, Tanahu and Nawalparasi districts adjoining over three dozen local governments. The river banks are rich in sand, pebbles, gritstone, stone, and forest woods. “Some 40 local bodies along the river from the mountain to plains have extracted the natural products of the river worth around one billion rupees every year although the Supreme Court ordered not to extract anything from the river,” said advocate Tulasi Ram Pokharel, resident of Rampur Municipality in Palpa, who also filed cases in the SC against the Kaligandaki river diversion and disobey of the court order. According to Pokharel, Rampur Municipality in Palpa and Chapakot Municipality in Syangja district extract river products worth at least Rs 50m each annually. The local governments those lie along the river include Kaligandaki, Rambha, Ruru, Kushma, Beni, Baglung, Jaljala, Jaimini, Bulingtar, Nisdi, Ghiring, Rising, Devghat, Galyang, GharapJhong, Barhagaun Muktikshetra and more. About a half dozen petitions were filed at the SC, seeking restrictive orders against the government plan for the river diversion and river products extractions as the Kaligandaki river has its own cultural importance and civilization dwelling along the settlements through the Kaligandaki river. Approximately, 3.5m people live in the surrounding areas along about a 309-km section of the river from mountain to foothills of Nepal. The river that starts from the Tibetan enclave to Triveni of Nepal accounts 496 km in length. Pokharel filed the case on 30 June 2021 against Office of the President, the Government of Nepal, Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, Ministry of Finance, then Finance Minister Bishnu Prasad Paudel, Chief Minister of Lumbini Province and National Planning Commission, demanding to stop the river diversion project that would spoil the chain of civilization, environment and culture. Senior Advocate Balkrishna Neupane filed a writ on 2 July 2021, seeking certiorari order against the river diversion that will damage the cultural civilization along the river. Similarly, senior Advocate Prakash Mani Sharma filed another case on 6 July 2021 demanding certiorari order with mandamus against extractions of river basin products by 40 local governments, district coordination committees, district administration offices and Gandaki Province. Immediately, the SC issued an interim stay order to stop diversion procedure and all sorts of extractions from the river. However, the local bodies including Rampur Municipality and Chapakot Municipality continued extractions unabatedly. Ruru Rural Municipality in Gulmi district filed a writ at the SC on 21 October 2021, demanding to scrap the stay order against the river extractions. On 27 December 2021, advocate Raja Ram Ghimire and Pokharel filed a court disobedience case at the SC against Rampur Municipality. The SC on 20 June 2022 dismissed the writ filed by Ruru Rural Municipality while other cases are undergoing at the SC. Advocate Pokharel claimed that the local bodies were still extracting the river products in the name of mouths of the small rivers and streams in these local units. “These extractions are against the SC order, triggering soil erosion, environmental degradation,” he said. “It’s also a slap against our proposal of enlisting the River in the World Heritage Site,” he added. Rampur Municipality called an invitation for bids on September 30, 2022 to contract for extractions of sand and gritstones, mentioning stream mouths but the seven locations called in the bid were the banks of the Kali Gandaki River. Kapil Bahadur Khand, spokesperson for the Rampur Municipality, admitted that they called the bid for the extractions from the mouths of streams adjoining the Kaligandaki river. “We are also checking the illegal extractions,” he claimed. “If they steal and extract by night or away from our notice, we are unable to take action against them,” he added. Khand further conceded that they allowed big contractors to extract the sand and gritstones from the river banks. “We have given permission for extractions after they presented letters from the Ministries or the Department of Roads,” he said. “We have allowed two big contractors to extract river products from the banks,” he added. There are a number of cases registered at the anti-graft body the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) against misuses of natural resources of the river. However, the actions against the violators are yet to be materialized against the cases belonging to the Kaligandaki River. The river has cultural and religious significance, and Hindu texts read sages including Pulaha, Kapila, and Jadbharat attained enlightenment by meditating along the banks at Beni-Galeshwor section. The river known as Gandaki is also considered a holy river having Shaligrams, goldstones. The Kali Gandaki Gorge or Andha Galchi is claimed as the deepest gorge of the world. The river stands among the longest and most interesting rivers of Nepal.

As the government is struggling to manage resources in the wake of the economic downturn in the country, the ceiling of the funds that will be allocated in the next fiscal year's budget for the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (MoPIT) has been reduced. The budget ceiling of MoPIT, the ministry responsible for infrastructure development in the country, has been decreased by Rs 54 billion. The ministry's annual budget for the current fiscal year is Rs 167 billion. However, it will be allocated only Rs 113 billion in the next fiscal year which is 32.33 percent lesser than this year. Minister for Physical Infrastructure and Transport Prakash Jwala acknowledged that the budget ceiling of the ministry for the upcoming fiscal year has been reduced significantly. As the country grapples with the economic downturn that has affected the federal government's revenue collection, the Finance Ministry is likely to present a budget smaller in size for the next fiscal year. The government had brought a Rs 1,793.83 billion budget for the current fiscal year. However, the National Planning Commission (NPC) has set a ceiling of Rs 1688.40 billion for the next fiscal year's budget. Minister Jwala said that despite the reduction in the budget ceiling, MoPIT is trying to allocate more resources under the capital expenditure heading. "Due to the difficult situation, the size of our ministry's budget has decreased. This may affect the development and construction work," he said in a program held at the ministry on Tuesday. "We will try to earmark more funds for the capital expenditure by cutting unnecessary recurrent expenditure as well as by prioritizing the projects." With a reduction in the budget size, the possibility of announcing new infrastructure projects in the next federal budget is slim. MoPIT officials also said works of the projects that are already under construction may also be affected. As the majority of large infrastructure projects fail to complete their construction within the deadline, the ministry is also planning to make a policy intervention to speed up the development of the projects. "There will be policy arrangements in place to improve coordination between inter-ministries, inter-agency, all three levels of government, and other agencies," said Jwala. The poor inter-agency coordination, particularly in acquisition of lands and forest clearance, has hampered the large infrastructure development projects related to hydropower and roads.  

At a time when the government is drafting the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, facing difficulties to pay pensions and salaries to civil service employees, the demand for reviving the highly controversial Local Infrastructure Development Partnership Program, popularly known as the 'constituency development fund' has surfaced again. The lawmakers of the ruling Nepali Congress during a parliamentary party meeting on Tuesday urged Finance Minister Dr. Prakash Saran Mahat to include the program in the upcoming federal budget. Most of the Nepali Congress lawmakers who spoke in the discussion with the finance minister urged that the program should be revived. The lawmakers argued that 'it was difficult for the federal parliamentarians to reach out to the people of their respective constituencies as there was no development budget for them'. They said there is a need to revive the program in the upcoming budget to 'connect with the people'. In response, Dr. Mahat did not commit to fulfilling their demand and briefed the lawmakers about the country's economic situation stating that it has become challenging to raise the necessary resources for the budget. Earlier run as two separate programs— the Constituency Infrastructure Special Program and the Constituency Development Program, the Local Infrastructure Development Partnership Program has faced widespread criticism for being distributive as well as for the alleged misuse of the funds. As the program gives discretionary authority to lawmakers to utilize the funds to run development programs in their constituencies, there were many instances in the past when the projects under the program were largely run by the local consumer committees close to the political party cadres. Under the program, the government in the fiscal year 2020/21 had allocated Rs 40 million for each constituency. The program is implemented through the local governments with the joint funding of federal and local government resources. The federal government stopped resources for projects under the program in July 2020 after deciding to invest the unused funds under the program for the Covid-19 response. However, in 2021, the then KP Sharma Oli government decided to release the budget despite widespread concerns over possible misuse of funds. Following criticisms from all quarters of the society, the then Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada in the federal budget of FY 2020/21 reduced the resources for the program. The funds for each constituency were reduced to Rs 40 million from earlier Rs 60 million. The federal government in FY 2020/21 had allocated Rs 6.60 billion for the program, down from Rs 9.90 billion in FY 2019/20. The controversial program was scrapped by the then Finance Minister Bishnu Poudel in the FY 2021/22 federal budget. According to NC Chief Whip Ramesh Lekhak, lawmakers have given various suggestions to the finance minister for the upcoming budget during Tuesday's meeting. Finance Minister Mahat briefed the lawmakers about the principles, priorities, and bases of the next fiscal year's budget.