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CPN-UML Secretary Yogesh Bhattarai said that his party’s bottomline is that either Finance Minister Janardan resign himself or Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba remove him from the post.

Talking to journalists at the Parliament building in New Baneshwor on Wednesday, he said that Sharma committed the crime against the country by involving two unauthorised persons to tweak taxes a day before the budget was presented. That is why, Minister Sharma cannot remain in the post, he said.

Bhattarai said that Sharma made the government documents disappear and deleted the CCTV footage with ill intention.

He said that they have demanded a parliamentary committee to probe into the incident.

Leader Bhattarai further said that action should also be taken against other people of the Finance Ministry who deleted the CCTV footage.

The Central Committee meeting of the CPN (Maoist Centre) scheduled for today has been postponed till tomorrow.

According to Ganga Dahal, personal secretary of the party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the meeting has been postponed till 11 am tomorrow.

The meeting became uncertain after the ruling and the opposition parties demanded resignation of Finance Minister Janardan Sharma.

Leaders inside the party have been demanding investigation after the Finance Minister took one after another controversial step.

The Nepali Congress leaders have also been demanding the resignation of Finance Minister Sharma who has been embroiled in a series of controversies.

Party Chairman Dahal presented the agenda and political report in the meeting that started from Sunday.

Sharma is accused of inviting two unauthorized persons to change tax rates on the eve of the budget presentation for the next fiscal year 2022-23.

Sri Lanka is "bankrupt," Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said Tuesday, as the country suffers its worst financial crisis in decades, leaving millions struggling to buy food, medicine and fuel, CNN reported.

Wickremesinghe told lawmakers that negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to revive the country's "collapsed" economy are "difficult," because the South Asian nation of 22 million has entered the talks as a bankrupt country, rather than a developing one. 

"We are now participating in the negotiations as a bankrupt country. Therefore, we have to face a more difficult and complicated situation than previous negotiations," Wickremesinghe said in parliament.

"Due to the state of bankruptcy our country is in, we have to submit a plan on our debt sustainability to (the IMF) separately," he added. "Only when they are satisfied with that plan can we reach an agreement at the staff level. This is not a straightforward process."

Sri Lanka is in the midst of its worst financial crisis in seven decades, after its foreign exchange reserves plummeted to record lows, with dollars running out to pay for essential imports including food, medicine and fuel.

Schools have been suspended and fuel has been limited to essential services. In several major cities, including the commercial capital, Colombo, hundreds continue to queue for hours to buy fuel, sometimes clashing with police and the military as they wait.

On Sunday Sri Lanka's energy minister, Kanchana Wijesekera, said the country had less than a day's worth of fuel left.

"In terms of fuel and food, our country was going to have to face this crisis at some point in time. Fuel was scarce. Food prices went up," he said, adding international crises like Russia's war in Ukraine have made things worse, according to CNN.

"Due to the recent global crises, this situation has become more acute and we who were in the frying pan fell into the oven," Wijesekera said. 

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe said he hoped that a report on debt restructuring and sustainability would be submitted to the IMF by August. Once there is an agreement, a comprehensive loan assistance program would be prepared for a period of four years, Wickremesinghe said.

His speech in parliament was interrupted by opposition lawmakers chanting cries of "Gota go Home" -- a reference to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was in attendance. 

For months, large numbers of Sri Lankans have been calling for Rajapaksa to resign over accusations of economic mismanagement. 

Wickremesinghe said that by the end of this year, inflation will rise to 60%.

"This will be a difficult and bitter journey," Wickremesinghe said. "But we can get relief at the end of this journey. Progress can be made." 

The British government said on Tuesday it is now advising against all but essential travel to Sri Lanka due to the impact of the economic crisis, CNN reported.

The governor of the last remaining eastern province partly under Ukraine’s control urged his more than 350,000 residents to flee as Russia escalated its offensive and air alerts were issued across nearly the entire country, Associated Press reported.

Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that getting people out of Donetsk province is necessary to save lives and enable the Ukrainian army better to defend towns from the Russian advance. 

“The destiny of the whole country will be decided by the Donetsk region,” Kyrylenko told reporters in Kramatrosk, the province’s administrative center and home to the Ukrainian military’s regional headquarters.

“Once there are less people, we will be able to concentrate more on our enemy and perform our main tasks,” Kyrylenko said.

The governor’s call for residents to leave appeared to represent one of the biggest suggested evacuations of the war, although it’s unclear whether people will be willing and safely able to flee. According to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 7.1 million Ukrainians are estimated to be displaced within Ukraine, and more than 4.8 million refugees left the country since Russia’s invasion started Feb. 24.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy said air alerts were issued Tuesday night in nearly all of the country, in many places after a long period of relative calm during which people searched for an explanation.

“You should not look for logic in the actions of terrorists,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “The Russian army does not take any breaks. It has one task — to take people’s lives, to intimidate people — so that even a few days without an air alarm already feel like part of the terror.” 

Much of the military activity appeared concentrated in Ukraine’s east. The Kramatorsk governor said that because they house critical infrastructure such as water filtration plants, Russia’s main targets are now his city and a city 16 kilometers (10 miles) to the north, Sloviansk. Kyrylenko described the shelling as “very chaotic” without “a specific target ... only to destroy civilian infrastructure and residential areas.”

Sloviansk also came under sustained bombardment Tuesday. Mayor Vadim Lyakh said on Facebook that “massive shelling” pummeled Sloviansk, which had a population of about 107,000 before Russian invaded Ukraine more than four months ago. The mayor, who urged residents hours earlier to evacuate, advised them to take cover in shelters, according to Associated Press.

At least one person was killed and seven were wounded Tuesday, Lyakh said. He said the city’s central market and several districts came under attack, adding that authorities were assessing the extent of the damage.

The barrage targeting Sloviansk indicated Russian forces were advanc ing farther into Ukraine’s Donbas region, a mostly Russian-speaking industrial area where the country’s most experienced soldiers are concentrated. 

Sloviansk has previously taken rocket and artillery fire during Russia’s war in Ukraine, but the bombardment picked up in recent days after Moscow took the last major city in neighboring Luhansk province, Lyakh said.

“It’s important to evacuate as many people as possible,” he warned Tuesday morning, adding that shelling damaged 40 houses on Monday.

The Ukrainian military withdrew its troops Sunday from the city of Lysychansk to keep them from being surrounded. Russia’s defense minister and Putin said the city’s subsequent capture put Moscow in control of all of Luhansk, one of two provinces that make up the Donbas, but the regional governor said Tuesday that fighting was continuing on Lysychansk’s outskirts. He said Russian forces were moving weaponry to Donetsk.

The question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength to complete its seizure of the Donbas by taking Donetsk province, too. Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops who fought in Luhansk need to “take some rest and beef up their combat capability.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that Moscow’s main priorities are “preserving the lives and health” of its troops and “excluding the threat to the security of civilians.” 

When Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine more than four months ago, his stated goals were defending the people of the Donbas against Kyiv’s alleged aggression, and the “demilitarization” and “denazifaction” of Ukraine.

Pro-Russia separatists have fought Ukrainian forces and controlled much of the Donbas for eight years. Before the invasion this year, Putin recognized the independence of the two self-proclaimed separatist republics in the region. He also sought to portray the tactics of Ukrainian forces and the government as akin to Nazi Germany’s, claims for which no evidence has emerged, Associated Press reported.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said Russian forces also shelled several Donetsk towns and villages around Sloviansk in the past day but were repelled as they tried to advance toward a town about 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the city’s north. South of the city, Russian forces were trying to push toward two more towns and shelling areas near Kramatorsk.

Meanwhile, Moscow-installed officials in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on Tuesday announced the formation of a new regional government, with a former Russian official at the helm.

Sergei Yeliseyev, the head of the new Moscow-backed government in Kherson, is a former deputy prime minister of Russia’s western exclave of Kaliningrad and also used to work at Russia’s Federal Security Service, or the FSB, according to media reports.

It wasn’t immediately clear what would become of the “military-civic administration” the Kremlin installed earlier. The administration’s head, Vladimir Saldo, said in a Telegram statement that the new government was “not a temporary, not a military, not some kind of interim administration, but a proper governing body.”