FOLLOW-UP DETAILS ON BHATTARAI DEATH

THOUSANDS OF WELL-WISHERS PAY HOMAGE TO KRISHNA PASHAD BHATTARAI

By Bhola B Rana

Kathmandu, 5 March: Thousands of old, young and children paid their last tribute to former Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattari, 87, as they filed past his body in single file the whole day since morning Saturday offering flowers and khatas.
Some even wept.
The body was kept at his ashram at Badegaon in Lalitpur; the body was taken by van at two in the morning from Norvic Hospital where he died Friday night at 11.26.
Nepali Congress (NC), of which he was the only founding member, at aan emergency central meeting at the Bhattarai residence Saturday morning decided to condole his death for 13 days from Saturday by lowering the party flag at party headquarters and contact offices abroad.
On the 14th. day of his death the party will hold memorial meetings nation-wide.
NC President Sushil Koirala wrapped the party flag on his body.
Bhattarai will be taken to the party office at Sanepa for tribute and then to Dashrath Rangashala.
The final journey to Pashupatinath Aryaghat for cremation will start from the stadium at 1.30 in the afternoon Sunday.
“He never compromised,” Yog Prasad Upadhaya, home minister and communication minister in the first government headed by Bhattarai in 1990 after panchayat was toppled.
The government with representatives of NC, communists and two royal representatives drafted a constitution to curtail absolute powers of the king, lift ban on political parties and hold parliamentary elections in one year.
Prime Minister Jhalanath Khanal, Vice-president Parmananda Jha and other party leaders visited Badegaon.
NC leader Sher Bahadur Deuba, who flew back Thursday from Singapore where he had gone for medical treatment cut short his visit and paid respect to Bhattarai who supported the rebel NC leader and his NC(Democratic) party after a split within NC.
Bhattarai later paid a leading behind the scene role in uniting the Girija and Deuba factions of Congress.
Former King Gyanendra sent a condolence message which was delivered by Secretary Pashupati Bhakta Maharjan.
Bhattarai is remembered as untainted, incorruptible and principled leader who went to Baluwatar with an earthen water jar, an umbrella and a tin box and came out with the three items.
“He even didn’t sigh a paper like other NC leaders saying they would stay peacefully without protests o secure release. This statement though, was not support for the king,” close Bhattarai aide Rajendra Kharel said.
“He never misused party funds and donations while conduct of financial transactions was transparent,: Kharel said revealing Kishunji would extend Rs1,000 monthly donation even to former Prime Minister Manmohan Adhikari of communist UML while conducting anti-panchatay and anti-kng protests on behalf of multi-party democracy.
Bhattarai would extend final assistance from contributors even to persons under distress from other parties, Kharel added.
‘He would tell us never to go into exile abroad but to conduct opposition from home,” Kharel said.
Communist leader Radha Krishna Mainali who worked closely with the two-time premier said, “He was a flexible leader who never compromised on principle. He was committed to constitutional monarchy and multi-party system. He was moderate. He worked with people with different opinions.”
Cabinet declared Sunday a public holiday to remember Bhattarai.
Maoists in a statement condoled Kishunki’s death but disapproved of his support for constitutional monarchy.
Japanese embassy praised the former premier’s contribution for democracy and asked for the completion of the peace process.
President Dr. Ram Baran Yadav said in a statement he was saddened by Bhattarai’s death saying who was an indefatigable statesman who never compromised on principles and was a patron of democracy.
Kishunj battled death since 16 February when he was admitted to hospital with bronchitis, conjunctive heart failure and chronic renal failure; he stopped responding to medicine since Wednesday.
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DIAMOND SHUMSHERE RANA CREMATED

Kathmandu, 5 Mach: Damond Shumshere Rana, 94, was cremated Saturday at Pashupati Aryaghat.
He died Friday afternoon at Norvic Hospital where Krishna Prasad Bhattarai also died several hours later in the night.
Historical novelist Rana was a NC activist who was jailed in the regime Rana regime.
Rana penned bestselling novels like Basanti and Seto Bagh translated into several foreign languages, including English.
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MISSING BULGARIAN PARAGLIDER FOUND

Kathmandu, 5 March: Kamen Kumanov,38, a Bulgarian paraglider missing for four days was found unconscious Friday by Armed Police Force personnel at Ramdikhola in Kaski.
He took off from Sarangkot Tuesday.
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SAJHA YATAYAT TO RESUME SERVICE
Kathmandu, 5 March: Preparation to resume Sajha Yatayat, which has remained closed for a long time, is underway, RSS reports.

At the seventh Annual General Assembly (AGM) of Sajha Yatayat Cooperative Ltd held here today, the Board of Sajha Yatayat has been authorised to resume service by giving loan up to Rs. 100 million.

Preparation to resume service of Sajha Yatayat which is facing closure as a result of corruption and irregularity is underway through taking loan, said Chairman of Sajha Yatayat and Secretary of Ministry of Labour and Transport Management Dinesh Hari Adhikari.

The AGM has also allowed the Board to buy new buses and clear dues of employees for the stability and development of Sajha Yatayat, he said. "Sajha's service will be resumed very soon and its lost image will be restored."

Sajha has completely remained closed for more than one year and its employees have been drawing salary for doing nothing. Though Sajha had established itself as a reliable transport company in the past, it later started incurring heavy loss due to corruption from top to bottom level.

Hailing the decision to restart Sajha's service, cooperative expert Keshav Badal said the transport company has to run through the concept of cooperative in the days ahead, which will ensure its future.
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DANGEROUS PLAN FOILED

Kathmandu, 5 March: Police have foiled a notorious jailbird’s plan from behind bars to detonate powerful bombs on major thoroughfares of the Capital, Baburam Kharel reports in The rising Nepal..
The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police on Friday uncovered that notorious jailbird Ram Prasad Mainali, the chief of Nepal Defence Army (NDA), was plotting from behind bars to detonate bombs to cause maximum
casualties.
The disclosure came close on the heels of the revelation of an extortion racket being operated by Milan Gurung, aka Chakre, from behind bars.
The police were successful in foiling the plan and also arresting six members of the underground armed outfit, NDA, with three bombs, weapons and ammunition from Gongabu in the Capital on Thursday.
Deputy Inspector General of Police and CIB Director Rajendra Singh Bhandari described the bust of Mainali’s henchmen as a tremendous achievement, saying that police were able to avert mass casualties in the Capital.
Mainali has been doing time in the Dillibazaar-based prison in connection with his involvement in a series of murders and bomb blasts, including the deadly bomb blast in the Assumption Catholic Church at Dhobighat in Lalitpur in
In course of interrogation, the arrestees—Cham Bahadur Thapa, 22, of Damauli; Dilip Adhikari, 30; Shiva Narayan Chaudhary, 19; Ram Kumar Chaudhary, 36; Ram Krishna Pahari, 33, and Raj Kumar Nagarkoti, 29—confessed that they came to the Capital on Thursday to detonate the bombs on busy thoroughfares. They said their aim was to cause maximum casualties to ‘realise’ their hidden motive—spread panic and extort millions from businessmen, top honchos of hydropower projects and industrialists.
For the past few months, CIB had put Mainali and his henchmen under tight surveillance after learning he had been demanding large sums of money from businessmen and threatening to blow up. He had been making phone calls and sending demand letters to them. CIB also obtained a demand letter on which Mainali had even put his signature. Preliminary investigation indicates that Mainali and his henchmen demanded a minimum Rs. 1.5 million each from several businessmen, including Sunil Sharma of Nobel Academy and Keshav Parajuli of Biratnagar. CIB said the some of Mainali’s arrested henchmen, including Shiva Chaudhary, had been trained by Mainali to make bombs. They had been in regular contact with Mainali over mobile phone or face to face on the premises of prison on various pretexts.
Police said the NDA plot this time had purely a criminal intent. “It seems that Mainali had filled the arrestees’ minds with dreams of earning quick bucks through terror,” said an investigating officer at the CIB. All arrestees have shady backgrounds with involvement in heinous crimes. They have also served prison terms in the past.
Investigators suspect that Mainali’s henchmen may have had a plan to detonate bombs on the premises of the Pashupatinath temple to divert attention from NDA. Police records show 39-year-old Mainali had also killed Salesian Priest John Prakash Moyalan in June 2008 in Dharan and detonated over two dozens bombs in several parts of the Capital. Mainali, a 10th grader, once a former member of the CPN-UML and then the UCPN (Maoist) during insurgency, claimed he took up arms to re-establish a Hindu state.
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KING NOTES TO BE EXCHANGED ONLY THROUGH 75 COUNTERS


Kathmandu, 5 March: Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) has announced that people ignoring its call to return banknotes bearing portrait of former kings will need to approach 75 designated bank counters to get them exchanged after March 15, Republica reports.

“People can get such notes exchanged at any financial institution till March 14. After that, only NRB offices and specified branches of Rastriya Banijya Bank (RBB) and Nepal Bank Limited (NBL) will exchange them,” said an NRB official.

The official elaborated that exchanges can be done only in eight NRB offices located in different cities, and 67 branches of Rastriya Banijya Bank (RBB) and Nepal Bank Limited (NB) that operate its note fund on behalf of the central bank.

NRB had launched a drive to withdraw notes bearing kings´ portrait from circulation on government´s request, mainly after the country was declared a republican state. Since then, it has long been appealing to the people to get them exchanged with new bank notes. However, the rate of exchange has been pretty slow. The central bank so far has managed to withdraw just over Rs 18.73 billion worth of such notes from the market.

“Such notes worth well around Rs 28.22 billion are still in circulation,” said the official.

As a part of its clean note policy, NRB plans to replace banknotes with kings´ portrait with those bearing the image of Mt Everest. So far, it has already circulated Rs 111.96 billion worth of banknotes bearing the image of Mt Everest.

However, concerned officials said continued circulation of huge amount of notes with kings´ portrait has been slowing their plan to jump into clean note regime.

The central bank has clarified that its policy to withdraw notes with kings´ portrait does not mean it has demonetized such notes. “Those notes will continue to hold their worth. It´s just that the people will have to get them exchanged with fresh notes from the central bank,” said the source.

However, given the trouble the people will need to take to exchange such notes, officials admit retailers and service providers might refuse to accept such notes, creating nuisance to general consumers. In such a situation, the central bank anticipates it might have to add more counters to arrange easy exchange facility.

“If such a situation emerged, we are planning to allow banks undertaking government transactions like Everest Bank and Nabil to provide such exchange facility,” the source said.

The central bank took the initiative to jump into clean note regime after it adopted clean note policy in the monetary policy for the current fiscal year. The initiative aims to withdraw soiled notes from the market, ensuring that only high quality clean notes are circulated in the market.

Under it, the central bank eventually plans to make stapled and handwritten notes not usable, and replace staples on the note packet by paper or plastic bands.

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OPINION

IMPACT OF INDIANBUDGET ON NEPAL





Kathmandu, 5 March: India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presented his career’s sixth budget for the government in Parliament with a clear signal that India has notched respectable growth by coming out of the global recession. Even as Mukherjee presented the budget, tempered with smiles in his familiar ‘rosogolla’ Bengali accent, it sent the Sensex soaring, Shanker Man Singh writes in The Rising Nepal..
Private sector
One expects the private sector to welcome this budget warmly as it counts on it heavily to invest in the envisaged infrastructure projects where investment required is estimated to be to the tune of $1 trillion between 2011-14.
India’s Finance Minister Mukherjee began the presentation of his budget speech for 2011-12 on the note that average inflation would be down next year and that the Indian economy would grow by 9% annually. The agriculture sector recorded a growth of 5.4% while industry grew by 8.1% in 2010-11. The finance minister added that the current account deficit poses a major concern.
The major highlights of the budget, inter alia, are: Encouraging trends in the development of the external sector; taxes, tariff procedures to be simplified; to reconcile environmental concerns, growth needs; current account deficit poses a concern; 13th Finance Commission has worked out fiscal consolidation roadmap; agriculture growth at 5.4%, industry at 8.1% in 2010-11; self sufficiency in pulses; self-help group fund to empower women; task force working on oil subsidy plans; Rs. 600 crores to public sector banks to maintain mandatory CRR; liberalisation of FDI policy; FII allowed to invest in MF schemes; 15 more mega food parks to be promoted.
The recent Indian budget has uncovered Nepal to both challenges and opportunities, something which has left the government reeling under the pressure of high inflation and historic high balance of payments deficit. Moreover, the Union Budget has raised public spending, subsidised petroleum products that is expected to decrease the inflation in India, signalling a strong impact on Nepal as well.
Since the Nepali financial authorities are already facing a hard time containing the double-digit inflation, the possible repercussions of the budget might woe the Nepal Rastra Bank. The Indian budget will raise the price of gold, silver, air fare, cigarettes and fridges. With the increase in the prices of gold in India, it will have an effect on Nepal’s import tariff regime and in the control of unauthorised trade.
The increase in import duty on gold, which made gold dearer in India, has further widened the tariff differences, a factor which the gold dealers say will surely spur smuggling of the metal from Nepal to India. At a time when the value of gold’s import stands well over the country’s overall exports, the widening duty gap is feared to aggravate the problem for the Ministry of Finance, leaving it with no option but to adjust the duty to bring it in line with India’s in the middle of the fiscal year.
While doing so, the agreement to control unauthorised trade between Nepal and India is of crucial importance.
Any change in duty calls for approval from the parliament, and the changes in the Economic Act cannot be adjusted without approval from Parliament. The tough choice for Nepal will have to be made on petroleum products, particularly petrol and diesel.
It has often been questioned how the foreign private sector will react. Some liberalisation has been announced to attract FDI in India and FIIs. More important for FDI is de-bureaucratisation of the civil service and ease of entry and exit underscored by labour market reforms.
Of course, more will come to India as China looks inwards towards developing its South West region with less reliance on exports and FDI. Nepal should take advantage of these opportunities.
It is significant that Pranab Mukherjee, who speaks of budgetary reforms, has not placed before Parliament what exactly is the impact of his budget of 2010-11. It was, after all, his predecessor, P. Chidambaram, that introduced Outcome Budgeting that sought to go beyond processes and Annual Objects/Targets. Perhaps, this will have to wait till the envisaged performance management systems (PMDA) is in place for the ministries and departments targeted.
Let’s hope that Nepal too will introduce this system to enhance public accountability and transparency while also promulgating a Fiscal Responsibility and Management Act, the draft of which is available with the Ministry of Finance since 2004 that requires the immediate attention of the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Bharat Mohan Adhikary.
When Pranab Mukherjee referred to ‘steady state’ growth in 2010-11, he was obviously averse to the hyperinflation that hurt the poor and lower middle class so badly. This year he prays to Lord Indra and Goddess Laxmi to bless him and his UPA government.
Impact study
Nepal Rastra Bank in the recent past used to conduct the impact of the Indian Budget on Nepal. Similar studies of the impact study should be done by the NRB in co-operation and consultation with the private sector and the relevant stakeholders. The suggestions, conclusions and the action measures to be taken are of crucial importance. Since Nepal’s economy is in trouble, the government might have to take hard decisions depending on the fundamentals of the economy.
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