By Our Reporter
The opposition parties have been obstructing the proceedings of the House of Representatives for the past two weeks demanding the resignation of Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak over the visit visa scam.
Although Speaker Devraj Ghimire and leaders of the major political parties have been trying to end the deadlock by forging consensus, they have been unable to resume the House meeting although the meeting of the National Assembly is continuing smoothly.
The main and other opposition parties which obstructed the House demanding the resignation of Minister Lekhak in the beginning, have now given up the demand for resignation and are sticking to their demand to form a high-level parliamentary committee to investigate the issue.
However, the two ruling big parties—the Nepali Congress and the UML are protecting Minister Lekhak citing that no police case was filed against him and the resignation of a minister over the involvement of a civil servant in illegal work would set up a bad precedent.
After the CIAA arrested Joint Secretary Tirtha Raj Bhattarai of the Immigration Department stationed at the Tribhuvan International Airport for his alleged involvement in collecting hefty money from those flying overseas with a visit visa three weeks ago, the opposition parties –Maoist Centre, Rastriya Swatantra Party, Rastriya Prajatantra Party and Unified Socialist—are demanding Lekhak’s resignation arguing that Bhattarai was transferred to the Immigration Office of the TIA by Minister Lekhak and the Minister’s secretariat was directly involved in the scam.
But NC and UML have been arguing that Minister Lekhak was not involved in the scam and he should not be dragged into the case as it was associated only with the civil servants.
The opposition parties which were not happy with the government tried their best to exert pressure on the ruling parties to meet their demands. But when the opposition parties were raising the issues of Home Minister’s resignation in the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court revived the old case of Maoist leader Agni Sapkota allowing police to investigate the murder case involving Sapkota, and the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) filed a case against Unified Socialist chairman and former Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, the two parties gave up the ‘resignation’ demands.
Now after dropping the ‘resignation’ demand, the opposition parties are demanding a powerful commission to investigate the visit visa scam, to which the ruling parties also agreed but only after the CIAA completes its investigation. The government has expressed commitment to help the CIAA in its investigation and form a mechanism, which the CPN (Maoist Centre) and Unified Socialist have also agreed. But RSP has made the formation of the parliamentary committee its bottom line, which caused a delay in resuming the House proceedings. The NC and RSP leaders also held talks over the issue but were unable to find the meeting point.
Obviously, RSP wanted tore take venge the ruling parties as its chairman Rabi Lamichhane was sent to jail by forming parliamentary committee. But they are gradually getting isolated. When the Maoist Centre is soft towards the government, the ruling parties would resume the House proceedings by mobilising marshals as the House has to discuss and pass the budget for the fiscal year 2025/26 within a month. Moreover, the UML has outright rejected the proposal of forming any commission on the visit visa scam, which has also resulted in the delay in resuming the House business.
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