KATHMANDU: Two separate Public Interest Litigations (PILs) were filed at the Supreme Court (SC) today challenging the

government decision of signing a contract with

an Indian company to print the Machine Readable Passports (MRP).

Advocate Hem Mani Subedi and law student Nara Bahadur KC filed the PILs seeking the apex court’s intervention into the matter.

The petitioners have sought SC to scrap the decision - entrusting the printing of MRP to the Security

Printing and Minting Corporation of India. The petitioners also sought the apex court order to the government to take a fresh decision completing due procedure through open tender.

Subedi and KC have said in their petitions that there was possibility of huge amount of money exchanging hands in the government decision to award the MRP contract to the Indian company.

In its interim order, earlier, SC had asked the government to abort the decision.