KATHMANDU, AUGUST 29
Nepali Congress General Secretary Gagan Kumar Thapa has blasted the government for proposing flawed provisions in the bill to amend some Nepal Acts.
Speaking from the rostrum of the House of Representatives today, Thapa said that while the government had the power to introduce bills to amend some Nepal Acts, the erstwhile Nepal Communist Party (NCP)-led government had blatantly violated the privilege. Thapa said that the KP Sharma Oli-led government had bundled provisions related to the Nepal Trust Act under the bill to amend some Nepal Acts.
He said the Minister of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Dhanaraj Gurung had joined other Nepali Congress leaders to oppose the Oli government's attempts to amend multiple laws through a single bill.
"If the process to amend the Nepal Acts was wrong at that time, how can it be right this time?" he wondered. The way this bill has been brought is an insult to the Parliament. It happened during Oli's government, and it is happening now," he added.
Thapa said that if the government was under the impression that it had a majority in the Parliament, and whatever it brings in the House would be passed by the House, then the government was wrong.
"We will have to show whether we are ready to be dominated by the government," Thapa added.
The bill's provision relating to Muluki Criminal Code was aimed at giving immunity to people involved in serious offences, and the NC cannot back the bill, he added. "The Nepali Congress won't accept criminalisation of politics and politicisation of crime," he added.
He urged the law minister not to continue with the provisions contained in the bill as it was drafted by the Oli government.
NC General Secretary Thapa further said that the bill proposed to change the environment laws, allowing the Environment Department to carry out the environment impact assessment which the line ministry and environment experts will not accept. "Who is behind all this?"' he wondered.
Stating that the EIA was also an international document, Thapa said that the EIA should be okayed only by the ministry.
He said that the bill also proposed to give the district court jurisdiction over revenue leakage cases, which earlier were under the high court's jurisdiction.
"There is a long list of errors that I have found in this bill, and I will discuss them with the relevant panel. If the PM takes the lawmakers for granted, then he is wrong," he said. "The PM must be ready to face opposition on this bill."
The government had, on May 9, registered the bill to amend some Nepal Acts in the HoR seeking to revise 80 Acts, including laws related to criminal office, environment protection, forest use and university education.
In the past, the government would seek to amend multiple acts through a single bill only for minor revisions, but in recent years, successive governments have been introducing such bills even for major changes in multiple Acts through a single bill.
A version of this article appears in the print on August 30, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
