Kathmandu, March 16

Minister of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Yogesh Bhattarai today told the National Assembly that the government had registered Nepal Civil Aviation Authority Bill in the House with the objective of separating the regulatory body and service provider body as per the suggestion received from foreign aviation agencies and officials.

Responding to lawmakers’ questions on the provisions of the bill, Bhattarai said one of the reasons why Nepali airlines had to face ban in Europe was non-separation of the regulatory aviation body from the responsibility of providing service.

Bhattarai said that at present the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal was acting both as a regulatory body and service providing agency, but that was not a right provision as there was always risk of conflict of interest in CAAN.

If the civil aviation regulatory body is not free from service providing responsibility, it cannot act independently to investigate air disasters, he argued. Bhattarai said civil aviation was a dynamic area and therefore the government felt the need to bring two bills — Nepal Civil Aviation Bill and Nepal Air Service Authority Bill — with the objective of separating their roles.

Earlier, National Assembly member Jitendra Narayan Dev told the NA meeting that the government had done the right thing by registering two separate bills to govern civil aviation issues with the objective of forming a separate regulatory body and service provider body.

Nepal Communist Party (NCP) lawmaker Ram Narayan Bidari said the bill gave power to the government under delegated power to frame laws, which was wrong. “If we remove the provision of delegated power from laws, it will help reduce corruption by 50 per cent,” Bidari said, adding that there was no rationale for giving authority to government agencies to frame rules.

“This bill says that a particular authority can do a number of things and after a broad list of such things, there is a clause that says the government authority can make additional legal provisions. Such provisions should not be in the bill,” he added.