Ex-PMs Nepal and Bhattarai must be held accountable for the Lalita Niwas land grab case
The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police reopened the file of the infamous Lalita Niwas land grab scam and arrested seven persons in this connection after a hiatus of two years. Those who were arrested include former Commissioner of the Election Commission Sudhir Kumar Shah, owner of Bhatbhateni Super Market Min Bahadur Gurung, then head of the Dillibazaar-based Land Revenue Office Kaladhar Deuja, and his subordinate employees Surendraman Kapali, Dharma Prasad Gautam, Hupendra Mani KC and Gopal Karki. Earlier, Gurung had been released on a bail amount of Rs 20 million after the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) filed a charge-sheet against him on the same scam. However, the police released Deuja, KC and Kapali after holding them in police custody for a few hours on Tuesday as they produced a Supreme Court's earlier order that asked the authorities not to arrest them in connection with the scam. The CIAA had also filed cases against as many as 175 persons, including then ministers, high-ranking bureaucrats and middlemen, who helped various people to transfer 143 ropanis out of 299 ropanis of land acquired by the government by giving the land owner due compensation in 1964, to individual ownership. Most of the politicians and bureaucrats were released on bail after Sher Bahadur Deuba came to power.
The KP Oli-led government, formed after the general election in 2017, had formed a probe panel led by then secretary Sharada Prasad Trital, to carry out a thorough study on the Lalita Niwas land grab case. The panel had uncovered that the government land worth billions of rupees had been illegally transferred to individuals by misinterpreting a cabinet decision in 1990. The Trital-panel had also found that the Madhav Kumar Nepal and Baburam Bhattarai-led governments had decided to transfer the government land to the individuals, who, after acquiring the land from the government, had sold plots of land to third persons. Two separate cases have been filed at the Supreme Court against Nepal and Bhattarai. But the court has kept both the cases on hold. It is learned that the ruling parties, including the Nepali Congress and CPN-Maoist Centre, had filed an impeachment motion against then chief justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana after they came to know that he was about to open the case against Nepal and Bhattarai in the land grab scam.
Interesting to note is that the CIB has now reopened the case after a two-year interval, and at a time when the Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led coalition appears shaky given the latest hobnobbing between the NC and the main opposition, CPN-UML. The second-rung leaders from both the sides are exploring ways to form the next government to be led by NC boss Deuba. On the other hand, the Special Court has not taken up the Lalita Niwas case very seriously. The government land would not have become individual ownership without the decisions of the council of ministers, led by Nepal and Bhattarai, who have not been charge-sheeted either by the CIAA or CIB. The apex court must also give its timely verdict on the cases involving Nepal and Bhattarai. The decisions made by their cabinets have incurred huge losses to the state, and they must be held accountable for what went wrong in this case.
TIA visitor rules
Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) authorities have done the right thing by introducing rules to limit the number of people seeing off or welcoming a passenger at the terminals. According to the notice issued Tuesday, just three relatives or friends will be allowed at its domestic or international terminals to welcome or bid farewell to the passengers. There is no doubt that the volume of both international and domestic flights have increased over the decades, and handling the ever-burgeoning passenger traffic poses a big challenge in delivering efficient services as well as to airport security. Relatives should understand the compulsion of the airport in restricting their numbers.
There is actually no need for large numbers of relatives or friends to see off or receive a passenger at the airport. Once the passenger has entered the terminal building, they are on their own. Crowds of people only create problems in managing the traffic at the already congested airport. To lessen the crowd at the airport, regular bus services could be started from the airport to well-built pick-up or drop-off points in the capital. This way, relatives will not need to travel to the airport to see off passengers.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 29, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
