Kathmandu, August 7:

Frustrated and irked by the worsening fuel crisis and scarcity of essentials, 13 fringe parties today picketed the rostrum during the parliament session of the Constituent Assembly, prompting the CA chairperson to adjourn the House for half-an-hour.

Later when the session resumed, Subas Chandra Nembang allotted time to the lawmakers to specially voice their concerns and issued a directive to the government to apprise the House as to how it wanted to solve the fuel crisis.

“The CA members have seriously raised the issue of fuel crisis. I draw the attention of the government to this problem. I issue a directive to the government to present its views regarding the problem in the next session of the House,” Nembang said.

CA members Prakash Chandra Lohani, Chandra Bahadur Gurung, Narayan Prasad Dahal, Mahendra Yadav, Yam Lal Kandel, Sarita Giri, Surya Bahadur KC Gayatri Shah, Laxmi Lal Chaudhary, Prem Bahadur Singh, Buddha Ratna Bajracharya, Brijesh Kumar Gupta and Keshab Prasad Mainali criticised the government for not solving the fuel crisis.

Lohani said the government was in deep sleep and was acting with dictatorial and feudal mindset by ignoring the House. He said people were queuing up at gas stations for hours and were forced to eat beaten rice due to the shortage of cooking gas.

Pledge to end petrol woes

KATHMANDU: CA member Gagan Thapa on Thursday accused the NOC of inefficiency. He accused the government of not bothering to ease fuel supply. Thapa said this after a group of young CA members headed by Nabindra Raj Joshi met Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat and Minister for Industry, Commerce and Supplies Shyam Sundar Gupta. Thapa said the group would work out plans to ease fuel supply. Joshi said they were pretty sure that a way out of the crisis would be worked out soon. He said the dual pricing regime must be introduced to ease fuel supply. NOC spokesperson Mukunda Dhungel said supply of diesel and kerosene was meagre. — HNS