The Lalita Niwas land grab scam has taken a new twist with it now also being labelled as organised crime. As such, the Kathmandu District Court on Tuesday gave permission to the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police to further investigate into the nine persons arrested so far in relation to the scam under organised crime. The CIB, as permitted by the court, has sent all nine arrestees in the crime to judicial custody for seven more days under the offence. Earlier, the CIB had received seven days to investigate the forgery of official documents. As per Nepal's law, investigation of a forgery case must be completed within 25 days while the police can seek the judicial custody of the accused for 60 days to investigate and file a case in the court. Organised crime, as per the Prevention of Organised Crime Act 2013, means three or more persons have been involved in criminal offences such as corruption or forgery. If proven guilty, the penalty can be quite severe, with the accused facing upto five years' imprisonment apart from fines, while also confronting charges of forgery and offence against the state.

The scam that followed close on the heels of the Fake Bhutanese Refugee scam has netted some really high-profile people. Those who have been sent to custody include former commissioner of the Election Commission Sudhir Kumar Shah, who transferred the government land to private ownership while working at the Bhaktapur land revenue office; Bhatbhateni Super Market owner Min Bahadur Gurung who bought the property; and Ramesh Kumar Pokharel, former chief of Samarjung Company, an agency under the home ministry responsible for the security of Lalita Niwas. He is accused of recommending to the government to transfer land ownership to a guthi, or trust. The court decided that the Lalita Niwas land grab scam was also organised crime after the CIB nabbed two persons who allegedly took huge sums of money from the land mafia to pose as fake unauthorized tenants of the guthi land as they would be entitled to 50 per cent of the land as farmer tenancy right. All in all, 143 ropanis of government-owned land were transferred to private ownership in four different stages with the collusion of the land mafia, government employees and political leaders, according to police.

The land couldn't have been transferred to individuals were it not for the decisions taken by the cabinet time and again under different prime ministers, namely, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Babu Ram Bhattarai and Madhav Kumar Nepal, since the 1990s. Moreover, the court in 2000 ruled that the Lalita Niwas land was individual property, paving the way for its sale to the land mafia. It thus looks as if the government is now trying to get back its land forcefully by ignoring the court verdict, which ruled in favour of the tenants. It is difficult to say how the scam will end, especially after Kathmandu's Mayor Balen Shah has taken the initiative to fence the public land at Lalita Niwas even as the case is still subjudice. With the Lalita Niwas land embezzlement case receiving so much coverage and attention in the social media, it is going to be very difficult for the government to dismiss it as in the past.

Lack of health workers

Access to affordable health services is the fundamental right of each and every citizen. This right cannot be ensured unless the government and the private sector are able to hire the required number of human resources needed to cater the services to the people across the country. The Medical Education Commission (MEC) has estimated that more than 250,000 human resources, including various levels of doctors and health workers, would be needed till the fiscal year 2030-31. In order to fulfil the needed requirement, the government will have to make huge investments in the health sector. However, it is not possible given the country's financial health.

As per the World Health Organisation, it is considered good to have 4.45 health workers per 1,000 population. The MEC has projected that more than 32,000 MBBS and MD (special consultant) doctors are needed till 2031. As per the MEC, 10,139 government health facilities, including hospitals and basic hospitals, and 2,250 private hospitals are in operation in the country at present. Setting up hospitals alone is not enough. These health facilities must also have different levels of health professionals and medical equipment to provide health services to the people all over the country.

A version of this article appears in the print on July 6, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.