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Chitwan: Minister for Home Affairs Ram Bahadur Thapa has hinted of a sting operation against the corrupt people. Addressing the first nation­al gathering of Nepal Federation of Photo Journalists (NFPJ) at Sauraha of Chitwan on May 31, the Home Minister urged journalists to go against the corrupt and the mid­dlemen who impede the country’s development and prosperity.

“It is important to launch a sting operation against those who are mired in corruption and who have sucked the country’s economy dry, whether they are in the judiciary or in any other profession,” he said.

Minister Thapa spoke on the need to publicize the photos of illicit drug peddlers, tax and revenue evaders, middlemen, smugglers and corrupt bureaucrats and crony capitalists.

The Home Minister urged journal­ists to write against the capitalists with black money and suggested that the photos of contractors who are against development also be made public. But those contrac­tors who contribute to the welfare of the society and the country’s development should be promoted, he added.

Saying the government was ready to work in collaboration with the journalists, he said journalism should be aimed at the country’s development and prosperity.

Nepal Communist Party leader and former Finance Minister Suren­dra Pandey said corruption is a key barrier to prosperity. He said no one could take away the rights of journalists in a democracy, while urging them to focus on economic development. RSS

The Ministry of Culture, Tour­ism and Civil Aviation has awarded the Tenzing-Hil­lary prize to Captain Siddhartha Gurung, a high-attitude rescue pilot with Simrik Air. The award carries a cash prize of Rs 50,000. Gurung was honored for his courageous acts of rescuing stranded moun­taineers and saving their lives. Minster of Water Supply and San­itation, Bina Magar, herself a moun­taineer, handed a certificate of appreciation and the cash prize to Gurung on the occasion of the 11th International Mount Everest Day on May 29. The day marks the first suc­cessful ascent of Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgey Sherpa in 1953. Also awarded on the occasion was Kami Rita Sherpa, who has successfully scaled Everest 22 times, and Lhak­pa Sherpa, who has successfully ascended to the top of the high­est mountain nine times, a record among women mountaineers.

Gurung was involved in the rescue operation of two Taiwan­ese tourists who had gone miss­ing for more than 45 days in the Langtang region in the district of Rasuwa last year. While one of them was rescued alive, another was found dead.

Simrik Air was also involved in an international rescue operation earlier this month when a 45-year-old Bulgarian mountain­eer Boyan Petrov went missing for about 10 days while scaling Mt Sisapang in Tibet, the autonomous region of China.

Simrik Air, in recent years, has been carrying out high-altitude rescue operations for mountain­eers and trekkers who lose their way. It also transports patients from the remotest corners of the country. “We’re still in the devel­opment phase of rescue missions,” says Gurung, who has been flying since 1994. “At present, most of our competitors hire foreign per­sonnel for rescue missions, who are not available all through the year. We are training local people and working on making our rescue available throughout the year.” Gurung credits the Switzer­land-based Air Zermatt for begin­ning the high altitude air-rescue missions in Nepal in 2009 and for training Nepali manpower.

Besides Gurung, the compa­ny employs a number of rescue pilots, namely Surendra Paudel, Bibek Khadka and Ananda Tha­pa. Even in areas where landing a helicopter is hard, Simrik Air car­ries out a longline rescue, which involves the rescuer being attached to the bottom of a rope flown to the rescue site.

The odds of the thorny Budhi Gandaki hydro project, with an estimated cost of Rs 270 billion, being awarded to the China Gezhouba Group Corporation have gone up. The budget speech presented by Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada this week does not mention the modality under which the project is to be undertaken. It only mentions that the project will be carried forward after giving compensation payments. Nor was the phrase ‘competitive process’ included in the federal government’s Policies and Programs unveiled on May 25 in the run-up to the budget presen­tation. This likely implies that the project will be given to the Chinese company.

This despite the fact that the white paper issued by the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation on May 8 had stated that a bidding process for the project would be initiated in the upcoming fiscal year.

Tug of war

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and his comrade-in-arms Pushpa Kamal Dahal have repeatedly declared that the Budhi Gandaki project would be handed to none other than the Gezhouba Group. The budget speech seems to be intended to make good on the prime minis­ter’s declaration, while going against the spirit of the Energy Ministry’s white paper.

Former Energy Minister Janardan Sharma had signed an agreement to hand the project to the Gezhouba Group without going through a competitive bidding process—the very next day that the government he was a part of was ousted and he was serving in a caretaker status. Shar­ma’s act was roundly criticized, for his term had already ended and his decision violated the Public Procurement Act. Following this, a joint meeting of the Agriculture and Water Resources Committee and the Public Accounts Committee of the then Legislature-Parliament directed the government to scrap the decision to award the contract to the Chinese company.

The previous Sher Bahadur Deuba-led government had then announced that the Budhi Gandaki project would be constructed with domestic investment. A taskforce under the coordination of Swarnim Wagle, the then vice-chairman of the National Planning Commission, had submitted a report to the government outlining a plan to carry out the project. Based on the report, the then Council of Ministers had decided ‘to undertake the Budhi Gandaki hydro project with domestic investment’.

The Energy Ministry’s white paper was in line with that government decision. But the recent budget speech, by omitting the word ‘com­petition’, has fueled speculation that Finance Minister Khatiwada has colluded with Prime Minister Oli to overturn the previous govern­ment’s decision and award the contract to the Chinese Company.

And what of West Seti?

What is more surprising is that the budget speech states that the West Seti hydro power project would be undertaken with domestic investment, although this is a project that has been deemed unviable even by the China Three Gorges Corporation, a global construction behemoth.

After Three Gorges wrote a letter to the Investment Board of Nepal implying that it intends to back off from the project, the IBN had formed a committee under Mahen­dra Man Gurung, a Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister, to look into the matter. Although the committee has submitted its report, the IBN is yet to make a formal deci­sion. But Khatiwada, by preempting the IBN’s decision, announced in the budget speech that the West Seti project will be undertaken with domestic investment.

Upendra Yadav was the chief instigator of the 2007 Mad­hes Movement, which was instrumental in enshrining ‘federalism’ in the interim constitution. The interim charter in turn was the basis for the constitution of the federal republican Nepal issued in 2015. This architect of the 2007 Madhes Movement is now joining the central government in Kathmandu after a seven-year hiatus. With the formal inclusion of his party Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum Nepal (16 seats), the ruling coalition has 190 seats in the 275-member federal parliament. Importantly, it now has a two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution.

The Yadav-led SSFN decided to join the Oli government after inking a two-point deal, which stipulates that the constitution will be amended based on ‘mutual agreement’. Such an amendment will incorporate the demands raised by political movements of recent times, says the deal. Interestingly, as per the deal, the proposed amendments would be reflected in the government’s annual Policies and Programs, even though there was no possibility of that: the two-point deal came only a day ahead of the May 29 budget presentation.

This is not the only reason to doubt the feasibility of the chief demand of the 2015 protests in Madhes: revision of provincial boundaries in the constitution so that the entire Tarai belt comes under two Madhes-only provinces. It is nigh impossible to imagine the Nepal Communist Party agreeing to such demarcations, even though it now has the requisite strength to amend the constitution any way it likes. The vast majority of NCP leaders are viscerally opposed to separating Tarai from Pahad, and so is a high proportion of the party’s electorate. So what kind of amendments can we realistically expect?

SSFN will most certainly ask for more tax-collection and spending rights for provinces. The SSFN-led government in Province 2 has long chaffed at the centralization of revenue-collection and revenue-mobilization powers in Kathmandu. SSFN will also pitch for an easier citizenship provision for those born to Nepali mothers and foreign fathers, another pressing issue for its core constituents in the Tarai belt.

In the bigger picture, with the inclusion of SSFN, the Oli government now seems unassailable, with total control over the federal government as well as all the seven provincial governments.