Kathmandu, February 20

Members of the Parliamentary Hearing Committee have deemed Samim Miya Ansari, who had been proposed as the Chairperson of Muslim Commission, ineligible for the post on three counts.

Firstly, he was a Nepal Communist Party (NCP) candidate under the proportional representation electoral system for the  House of Representatives in 2017.

“His name was included in the closed list of the PR from the Muslim community and as such he could not be eligible for the constitutional post,” a PHC member told THT. He said Ansari’s name should have been proposed for the commission only after removing it from the PR list.

Ansari also figures on the NCP Central Committee members’ list submitted to the Election Commission. This also makes him ineligible for the post.

Ansari, a resident of Kathmandu, joined the erstwhile CPN-UML after quitting Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal prior to local level polls in 2017. He became a Central Committee member of NCP after CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre merged on May 17.

According to PHC members, there are even discrepancies in the details of Ansari’s citizenship certificates. They said Ansari had obtained a duplicate citizenship and the details related to his address and date of birth did not match in the original and duplicate citizenship.

As per the decision of PHC, the Parliament Secretariat has written a letter to the Election Commission seeking information about his affiliation to any party. The Parliament Secretariat also asked Kathmandu District Administration office to check his citizenship certificate and his family background. The secretariat also wrote a letter to the Constitutional Council regarding his academic certificates.

“We have sent letters to the authorities concerned, but we are yet to receive any response from them,” PHC Secretariat Under-secretary Keshav Aryal told THT. According to him, the PHC will meet next on Sunday.