PM must use whatever coaxing it takes to persuade Deputy Prime Minister Upendra Yadav to get his Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal member to vote against Ansari in the PHC

The ruling parties face an image crisis with a controversial candidate likely to head the Muslim Commission by Saturday. On January 24, the Constitutional Council, headed by the Prime Minister, had forwarded Samim Miya Ansari’s name to the Parliamentary Hearing Committee (PHC), recommending him for the post of chairman of the Muslim Commission. The PHC is given 45 days, and has till Saturday, to either approve or reject his candidacy, failing which, he automatically lays claim to the post. The PHC is in a dilemma as the committee members representing the ruling Nepal Communist Party are against Ansari’s candidacy, but they are short of one vote to reject him through a two-thirds majority. While the government maintains a mysterious silence about the whole issue the Federalist Socialist Forum-Nepal, as a ruling party, manages to stand aside, unconcerned. This is absolutely intriguing. The 15-member PHC has nine members from the NCP, four from the opposition Nepali Congress and one each from the Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal and Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal. The Nepali Congress has stayed away from the PHC meetings saying the main opposition was by-passed while picking Ansari to head the Commission. The committee chairman is from the Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal and can only vote if there is a tie.

Ansari is said to have presented a fake citizenship certificate to become the Commission chairman. According to law, one must be 45 years to head a constitutional commission, so Ansari had inflated his age by seven years to October 10, 1973 whereas he was born in 1980. Questions also surround his Indian high school qualifications, which took around 14 years to have them attested by the authorities here. Nepal’s law also states that members of constitutional bodies should not be holding membership of any political party. However, Ansari was a member of the central committee of the ruling NCP at the time of his recommendation as chairman of the Muslim Commission. He had also filed his candidacy as a party member under the Muslim quota under the Proportional Representation system during the election to the House of Representatives.

From any standpoint — constitutionally, legally and politically — Ansari is ineligible to head the Muslim Commission. Since it was a lapse on the part of the Constitutional Council to recommend his name for the post of chairman of the commission in the first place, it should also know how to remedy the situation. At first glance, it may seem like a constitutional or legal problem, but it can be solved politically. The Prime Minister must use whatever coaxing it takes to persuade Deputy Prime Minister Upendra Yadav to get his Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal member to vote against Ansari in the PHC and not allow time to lapse till Saturday. The ruling party MPs, if serious about rejecting Ansari, should mount pressure on the NCP leadership and the government to use its near two-thirds majority in Parliament to back them. The ruling party must take a stance on the issue and have Yadav toe the line. Or else, what is the point of having a massive parliamentary strength if that cannot be used in times of need?

Transmission lines

A transmission line is a major component in dispatching power to the cities and industrial areas from the power plants, often located far from such places. However, Nepal Electricity Authority – the sole authority that purchases power – gives least priority to building the transmission lines that connect the hydropower plants with the areas where electricity is consumed.

The NEA is now at the final stage of building the transmission lines on the Kabeli corridor – from Jhapa’s Lakhanpur to Panchthar’s Amarpur – which will be transmitting 150 MW of electricity generated from various power plants in the hilly districts in eastern Nepal. The project has been delayed by four years, incurring a huge financial loss to the private power producers who had completed their hydropower plants on time. They could not feed their energy to the national grid due to the delay in building the transmission lines. This is not an isolated case. There are other hydel projects being built on other river basins, and they are also waiting for the timely completion of the transmission lines. There is no point in completing power projects in time if they have to wait for the transmission lines to complete.