Nepal Oppn accuses PM of ‘sell-out’ to India on return, Supreme Court stays Citizenship Bill
Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s trip to Delhi that he described as ‘very successful’ has apparently united the opposition parties which together have accused him of a total ‘sell-out’ to India.
The House of Representatives was adjourned for the day on Sunday to meet on Monday as the Opposition comprising Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, Rashtriya Prajatantra Party, Rashtriya Swatantra Party and the Nepal Mazdoor Kisan Party, asked the Speaker to stop the listed business and have PM summoned to address their grievances.
As members refused to relent, Speaker Devraj Ghimire adjourned the House and ruled that it will meet the next day.
In the meantime, a single bench of the Supreme Court comprising justice Manoj Kumar Sharma issued an interim stay on the operation of the Citizenship Bill that President Ram Chandra Poudel had approved in just a couple of hours before Dahal was to embark on an official visit to Delhi.
Padam Giri, chief whip of the UML, told mediapersons that PM Dahal had gone beyond brief and at the cost of national interest as he refused to take up with India the border dispute issue, and a mural on the wall of new [Indian] Parliament building allegedly showing Lumbini and Kapilvastu as part of Akhand Bharat.
The approval of the Bill is believed to have addressed Delhi’s wish expressed some five years ago on the issue of granting citizenship to people in Tarai, adjoining India.
Legal opinions were divided on the status of the Bill with some experts saying that it had died along with the demise of the previous parliament from where it had originated, and the President had no jurisdiction to put his approval now after his predecessor head of the state had first declined assent, and then sat over it when Parliament sent to her again.
