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The government has expressed its commitment not to allow Nepali land to be used against any nation.

A Cabinet meeting held on Monday thanked all the parties and lawmakers among others who helped endorse the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and said that the government would not allow Nepali land to be used against neighbouring countries or any nation.

The Cabinet made such a decision at a time when doubts were harbouring about the use of Nepali land against neighboring India and China after the endorsement of the MCC.

"Nepal is committed to not allow Nepali land to be used against India and China among other countries in line with foreign policy of Nepal to maintain friendly relations with all the countries," government spokesperson and Minister for Communications and Information Technology Gyanendra Bahadur Karki said.

CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal expressed his happiness over the endorsement of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) with an interpretative declaration.

Speaking at a press conference organised at his residence in Khumaltar on Monday, he said, “I am very happy that the MCC has been endorsed from the Parliament. Now, the country has been saved from being driven into deep conflict.”

Dahal defended the proposals and stances put forward by him and the party earlier on the US aid project.

He said that the $500 million US grant project was dragged into the controversy after then Minister for Foreign Affairs Pradeep Gyawali during his visit to the United States said that Nepal has also become a part of the Indo Pacific Strategy.

Chairman Dahal said that he floated an alternative to ratify the MCC by endorsing the resolution motion after the then taskforce of the Nepal Communist Party suggested that the MCC should not be passed in its current form. But, the then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli ignored his idea, he claimed.

Dahal claimed that he had an agreement with Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba to table the resolution motion to pass the MCC.

“I had also suggested Nepali Congress and UML forge consensus to endorse the MCC to safeguard the constitution and the country,” he claimed.

Rasriya Janamorcha has decided to pull out of the five-party alliance.

Expressing dissatisfaction over the endorsement of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the Janamorcha concluded that it will have no meaning to stay in the coalition now.

Durga Paudel, who is the only lawmaker of the Janamorcha, stood against the $500 million grant agreement during the voting on the MCC held yesterday.

CPN (Maoist Centre), Nepali Congress, CPN (Unified Socialist) and Janata Samajbadi Party and Janamorcha had moved the court after the then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli dissolved the House for the second time.

Janamorcha joined the alliance with an objective to institutionalise the democracy and change after the Supreme Court issued a mandamus order to appoint Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba as the Prime Minister of the country.

The party, however, had decided not to be a part of the government. Instead, the party decided to support the government from outside.

The EU has imposed a blanket flight ban on Russian planes, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has announced, BBC reported.

"We are shutting down EU airspace for Russian-owned, Russian-registered or Russian-controlled aircraft," she said.

All such planes, including the private jets of oligarchs, will now be unable to land in, take off from or fly over any EU nation.

Russian planes have also been banned from UK airspace.

Russia's biggest airline, Aeroflot, said it would cancel all flights to European destinations until further notice in a retaliatory move on Sunday. 

Ahead of the decision, European countries had been closing their airspace one by one. Germany said its ban would last three months.

Departure boards at Moscow's Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo airports showed dozens of cancellations on Sunday, including flights to Paris, Vienna and Kaliningrad.

Russia's S7 Airlines said on Facebook it would cancel flights to many of its European destinations until at least 13 March.

Russia has been responding with tit-for-tat restrictions on countries banning its flights.

The Commission president said that the EU was also going to ban Russia's state-owned news outlets Sputnik and Russia Today, widely seen as a mouthpiece for the Kremlin. "We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe," she said.

The restrictions on flights will require Russian airlines to take circuitous routes, resulting in longer flight times.