PREGNANT WOMAN AWAITING AIRLIFT DIES

NC ACTIVIST SHOT, INJURED IN BANKE

Kathmandu, 19 March: Kalu Baruwa, 25, was shot and injured seriously in Banke Saturday.
Three suspects have been arrested.
A pressure cooker bomb hidden in a bag and placed in front of the house of a trader was defused in Birgunj Saturday morning.
Law and order continues to deteriorate in the terai.
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STRANDED WOMAN DIES IN KULTI AIRPORT IN BAJURA

Kathmandu, 19 March: A pregnant woman awaiting airlift to Nepakgunj for delivery died at Kulti airport n Bajura Saturday.
Nandu Dadal, 40, was awaiting airlift for six days.
Flights in Karnali anchal have been disrupted amid protests of airfare hike by operators.
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CAMPAIGN TO CONTROL ELEPHANTIASIS

Kathmandu, 19 March: A two-day campaign to control elephantiasis will be launched din 36 districts, including three in the Valley, from 26 March, health officials said.
Free medicine will be distributed to curb the disease spread by mosquitoes.
Government started such a campaign eight years ago.
Government hopes to contain the disease in another nine years.
Altogether 9,5000 volunteers will be mobilized for the campaign.
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SUPREME COURT ORDERS RELEASE OF TIBETAN REFUGEES

Kathmandu, 19March: Supreme court (SC) Thursday ordered release of 10 Tibetan refugees
They’re arrested 10 March for anti-China protests.
A human rights worker filed a petition for their release.
A two-judge bench ordered the ordered the home ministryandsecurity agencies to release the refugees.
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MEDIA GOOGLE

“The Congress should come [into government] to make peace and constitution successful. If it’s necessary for that, I’m ready to sacrifice the post of deputy prime minister,”

(Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minster Bharat Mohan Adhikari, Anapurna Post, 19 March)
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GOVT. MULLS MANDATORY ELECTRONIC BILLING
Kathmandu, 19 March : The government is soon to require all industrial and trading firms across the country to switch to electronic billing, something which will mechanize all VAT-related transactions and help the revenue administration trace them, Milan Mani Sharma writes in Republica.

The new arrangement has been worked out in a bid to tackle a VAT bill racket that is assaulting the very heart of the country´s tax system.

Under this arrangement, large taxpayers will need to adopt a web-based computer billing system. Medium and smaller taxpayers too will need to arrange for fiscal printers and cash register machines respectively and compulsorily input all their transactions into them.

“The new policy changes will be effected through the upcoming budget,” a highly placed government source told Republica.

The change is being effected as per the recommendations of the Inland Revenue Department (IRD), whose recent crackdown on 32 firms involved in forging VAT receipts revealed that the racket is much wider in scale and is present in almost the entire business sector.

IRD found that under the racket known the world over as the ´case of the missing vendor´, firms including big corporate houses were either buying genuine VAT receipts from smaller firms or buying printed receipts of some other registered traders to create fake transactions in order to evade tax. Some of them even claimed VAT refund on the basis of the fake VAT receipts and customs documents, thereby siphoning off funds from the national exchequer without having contributed even a penny into it.

The government has admitted that the racket, which has so far been found to involve around Rs 10 billion (well over $138 million) and has inflicted revenue losses of over Rs 4 billion, flourished because it did not mechanize the VAT system. In the absence of this, the tax administration failed to keep track of the vendors, while enabling entrepreneurs to create fake transactions.

“To our reckoning, we must not delay enforcement of an electronic billing system,” the source said.

Under the new practice, web-based billing will directly link transactions of large taxpayers with the the system at the Inland Revenue Department (IRD). This means whenever they issue a bill to any party, the transaction will be automatically recorded in the main server at IRD.

The fiscal printers, like the ones used by hotels and service entities, will have a device that records all transactions carried out over the span of a year. Cash register machines will also have a similar backup device, registering all transactions carried out by small taxpayers.

“Because the taxpayers will not be able to manipulate transactions recorded in the system, we will be able to track down the vendors and cross-match their transactions,” the source said.

This is not the first time the government is talking about web-based computer billing, fiscal printers and cash register machines. The existing tax law encourages taxpayers to install such a system voluntarily and even allows them to deduct the cost incurred from their profits, thereby freeing them from any additional financial burden. However, only a handful of business firms bothered to implement the system.

Given their importance in plugging leakage, particularly of VAT, which has been reeling due to under-invoicing and lack of receipts, the government four years ago had announced it was making electronic billing compulsory. However, this never came into implementation.
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OPINION

DIAMOND WILL CONTINUE TO SHINE





Kathmandu, 19 March: The man who rebelled against Rana oligarchy despite being a member of the same mighty political clan, is no more with us. However, Diamond Shumsher Rana has left precious literary and political assets behind him. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth but he chose a different course of action, rather a dangerous one that almost cost his life. Rana rulers slapped a capital punishment on him for demanding democracy and liberty at a time when they were ruling the nation with an iron fist. He was one of the few defiant members of Rana families, who came to the streets against the autocratic regime. He was supposed to be hanged under a court martial. He was a captain in the army but he, along with like-minded dissenting Ranas including Bal Krishna Sama, took out a political rally against the repressive rule. He narrowly escaped the capital punishment thanks to the revolution that toppled Rana’s rule a month after he was sent to army custody, TituRaj Subedi writes in The Rising Nepal..
Diamond Shumsher Rana was a rare example of how an aristocrat turns into an ardent democrat and sides with laypersons throughout his life. Many people know Rana as a famous novelist or the writer of Seto Bagh (The Waking of White Tiger) but his philanthropic and socialist proclivity has not come to light much compared to his towering literary persona.
Rana willingly gave his 1,000 bighas of land to the tillers. There was historical reference to his magnanimous move. Following the general elections in 2015 BS, Nepali Congress rose to power. NC leader Shubarna Shumsher Rana asked the then Prime Minister BP Koirala to acquire his 20,000 bighas of land and distribute it to the tenants. In fact, BP did not want to seize Ranas’ property so as to encourage them to bring back their property from India. BP accepted Subarana’s proposal and then asked Diamond, "What do you think about this?"
"I am ready to distribute my land to the poor farmers," Diamond replied to BP. Not only this, he later donated an additional 45 bighas of land to the tillers who used to visit him until recently to express their gratitude for his benevolence.
‘Basanti’ made him a rebel
Rana rulers were afraid of education and the light of knowledge, which they thought would topple their rule. So, they did not encourage their raitis (subjects) to be involved in reading, learning and writing activities. The people had to secure permission from them to open a school or publish a book. If one went ahead on their own, it would be a serious offense. Diamond committed a crime in the eyes of rulers by publishing ‘Basanti’ because he did not seek permission for its publication. Thinking that the rulers would not give him permission to print it because he was a junior army officer, he managed to publish it from Benaras in 1948 and its copies were circulated at home. The publication of ‘Basanti’ that throws light on the historical facts about the rise of Junga Bahadur with his bloody massacres created uproar among the Rana rulers. They thought it was against the regime. Diamond antagonized the Ranas. With this, Diamond became a pariah in the circle of ruling Rana elites.
"I stood against the policy of Rana rulers not to publish books. The publication of ‘Basanti’ was a starting point of my hostility with them," Diamond had told a local TV channel some years ago. Diamond said if the Rana rulers had permitted him to publish the book, the situation would have been quite different. "I might not have revolted against them."
‘Seto Bagh’ gave him everything
The tremendous success of Seto Bagh did not only gave Diamond money and fame but it also set several records in the history Nepali literature. It attempts to realistically portray the political conditions of Ranas’ rule. It offers heart-rending descriptions on the downfall and merciless killing of Jung Bahadur’s sons. It was the first Nepalese historical novel that was published in several languages. It is the only Nepali fiction from which the writer enjoyed royalties from two separate publication houses. Late Diamond lived on the royalties of the book. This helped him to manage education for his offspring. "Seto Bagh gave me everything - fame and money. I never had imagined that it would be such a huge success," he used to say.
Rana wrote the novel during his stay in Nakhhu jail from 1960 to 1966. Diamond was sent to jail for protesting against the party-less Panchayat system. Some critics argue that this novel grew the readers’ interest in the fictions in Nepal. They compared Diamond with French novelist Balzac, who also hailed from aristocratic family and wrote fictions describing their social and political vices and atrocities. Balzac is credited for developing people’s habit of reading fiction. So was the case with Diamond.
The cryptic meaning of the title of the book is ever fascinating. Actually, there is no white tiger in the world. In his final years of life, Jung Bahadur started to see everything white. While he was on a hunting mission in the forest near Pattharghatta in Sarlahi, he shot dead a tiger but he said he killed a white tiger. "Seto bagh stands for a flawed vision of Jung Bahadur," Diamond had said in an interview with a web magazine.
He said that Jung Bahadur thought everything would be right with his hard-won regime. "He hoped it would do good for his family and the people. But, it proved wrong. To seize power, the descendents of Dhir Shumsher finished off Jung Bahadur’s sons one by one. The Rana rule was a curse to the people," Diamond said.
He said that Jung Bahadur was a hardworking and great man, wishing for the progress of the country but he followed the wrong methods. "He wanted to keep the Ranas’ aristocracy intact. Had he introduced democracy at that time, the country would have progressed so much till today."
True to his name
Diamond is an English name. Diamond’s grandfather Sher Shumsher Rana baptized him as Diamond hoping that his grandson would be like an Englishman. "My father used to tell me that my grandfather gave me the name ‘diamond’ by coming under the fascination of English language and culture," said Diamond. "My grandfather happened to visit UK. To show an air of prestige, he chose this name," he said, and added that his father Buddha Shumsher JBR recounted this story in a disparaging way as if he were not happy with the name of his son.
Diamond was born in 1918 at Tansen Durbar when his grandfather was the governor of Palpa. His horoscope mentioned that his name must begin with the letter ‘Da’.
True to his name, he proved himself a real diamond in the literary and political history of the country. He authored several other novels, which have enriched the Nepalese literary domain. He was working on a memoir but sadly he could not finish it as he stopped writing it due to his eye problem prior to his demise. Nonetheless, Diamond will continue to live in the hearts and minds of the Nepalese for his great sacrifice, humility and love for the country.
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