Kathmandu, March 4

Once a runaway success, the Bhaktapur-based Nepal Engineering College has virtually been in a state of coma, thanks to a faction that wants to turn a social enterprise into a profit venture.

NEC was originally registered as a not-for-profit social organisation at the District Administration Office, Bhaktapur, in 1994. After producing several batches of engineers, a faction led by Lambodar Neupane made an attempt to change the status of the college to a profit-making private limited company in 2017.

By this time, the college had purchased 36 ropanis of land and its coffers had swollen to Rs 250 million.

The college still has Rs 210 million in its bank accounts, but cannot withdraw the sum because the account is frozen and the college is making do with limited cash in transaction to meet the needs of 2,100 students and over 200 staffers.

College Principal Hari Krishna Shrestha said Neupane might have bribed former commissioner of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority Raj Narayan Pathak in desperation to get the status of the college changed.

According to Shrestha, two board members of the college, Dipak Bhattarai and Hari Prasad Pandey, who are close to him, had lodged a complaint of corruption at the CIAA in May. They had demanded a probe into alleged irregularities. The anti-graft body then recorded statements of seven office bearers of the college, including former principal Shobha Kanta Dev and Neupane.

While Hari Krishna Shrestha, Dipak Bhattarai, Shalin  Bhattarai,  Som Prasad Mishra, Hari Prasad Pandey and Arjun Gautam are in the faction that opposed Neupane’s bid to register the NEC as a private company, other members of the board — Ramratna Upadhyay, Upendra Gautam, Lavraj Bhattarai and  Surya Bahadur KC — supported Neupane’s bid.

Shrestha said Neupane had got other key documents that could support his bid to change the status of the college to a private company, but since he needed a clean chit from the CIAA to get affiliation from Mid-western University, he wanted to settle the CIAA complaint filed against him. “This could be the reason why he wanted to bribe Pathak,” he added.

Neupane had succeeded in getting NEC registered as a private company on 8 May 2017. Shrestha and his faction lodged a complaint at the Office of the Company Registrar against it and got the decision revoked on 6 December 2017.  Neupane moved Patan High Court against OCR’s decision on October 4 and got a ruling in his favour.

Shrestha filed a case challenging Patan High Court’s verdict in the Supreme Court. The SC issued an interim order last month telling the authorities concerned not to implement Patan High Court’s verdict till the final SC verdict.

According to Shrestha, government bodies ordered a probe after Rs 330 million was transferred to the NEC’s bank account in one go and Rs 210 million was debited from the NEC’s bank account in a similar manner.

“Neupane and his accomplices had embezzled huge amount of money,”  Shrestha alleged.  He said his faction members lodged complaints at 12 government offices, including the Prime Minister’s Office and Department of Money Laundering Investigation, after the

two suspicious transactions were made using NEC bank accounts.

“The record shows Rs 330 million being deposited in NEC Account and Rs 210 million being debited from the account, but in the bank’s official report, there is no record of such transactions. The report does not show who the sender of 330 million is and who the receiver of Rs 210 million is,” he added.

Despite repeated attempts, Neupane and his faction members could not be contacted.