LAWMAKER GUPTA ABDUCTION CHARGE HEARING BEGINS

LAWMAKER GUPTA ABDUCTION CHARGE HEARING BEGINS
Kathmandu, 16 Feb.: Hearings on the 22 December abduction of businessman Pawan Kumar Sanghai from Kamaladi in the capital began at Kathmandu district
court Wednesday.
Lawmaker and NSP (D) leader Shyam Sundar Gupta and five others have
have been charged for abduction and extortion by Kathmandu district
attorney office.
Others charged are: Akash Lama, Jit Bahadur Gle, Amir Acharya, Kishore Pande and Bishnu Laxam are in judicial remand as police prepare charges.
Gupta is the prime suspect who continues to be lawmaker.
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NEPAL TOLD TO ENHANCE AIR SAFETY
Kathmandu, 16 Feb.: The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has urged Nepal to speed up implementation of air safety measures by enhancing human capabilities and giving more autonomy to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), The Kathmandu Post reports.
The EASA’s recommendations to apply the existing safety measures effectively follows concerns being raised about Nepal’s air safety by airlines, the government and air travellers.
“Nepal cannot afford to remain passive on developing human resources and safety awareness at a time when the country’s tourism and aviation industry is growing continuously,” said Wendell Lyneh, International Cooperation Officer and South Asia Regional Manager of the EASA. “Widespread awareness about air safety is also essential.”
A two-member EASA delegation of two International Cooperation Officers, Lyneh and Asmir Kruhovic, is on a week-long visit to Nepal to study its safety situation which will help EASA to develop a roadmap in the field of aviation safety oversight.
The European Union aims to enhance aviation safety in 191 member countries of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a global regulatory body of the aviation sector. The EASA team will look into legislation, organisation, personal licensing, flight operation, air worthiness, air traffic management, airdrome operation and accident investigation of Nepal.
Lyneh said that Nepal had suffered a number of air accidents in recent years, and that special focus should be placed on safety along with improved human resources in the country’s aviation. “It’s not only CAAN that should be active, the political leadership should also be concerned about the air safety condition in Nepal,” he said.
Nepal will implement the EASA’s roadmap for aviation safety as per its commitment to ICAO. The country has pledged to ICAO to implement comprehensive air safety measures in the field of air operations, among others.
“The roadmap will help Nepal to fulfil its safety oversight obligations that includes an audit of the organisation, processes, procedures and programmes,” said Sanjeev Gautam, national coordinator of ICAO’s Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme at the CAAN.
An ICAO audit team visits Nepal annually to validate whether the information provided by the country on air safety is correct. They conduct an on-site audit of the system and overall capability for safety oversight. Nepal wants to better the safety situation as failure to ensure better safety standards may lead to high risk for the country in terms of operation of international flights.
The EASA team also held extensive meetings with aviation stakeholders. It is scheduled to meet with officials of the EU mission here. They will brief officials of CAAN and the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation about their inspection report on Thursday. CAAN has also initiated preparations to separate its roles as a regulator and service provider to make both the functions effective.
“We are preparing to separate the functional role from the regulatory one starting from March,” said Gautam.
“However, the ultimate target is to split CAAN into two separate entities as required by ICAO obligations which will take at least five years.”
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EC ASKED TO BE TOUGH WITH PARTIES
Kathmandu, 16 Feb.: An Election Commission (EC) panel investigating the sources of income of political parties has recommended the EC cancel the registration of political parties that have failed to submit their property details, Bhadra Sharma writes in The Kathmandu Post..
The recommendation of the Functional Committee is likely to affect 20 parties that missed the deadline to submit their income and expenditure statements.
The name of the parties and the nature of action against them is likely to be announced within a couple of days, according to EC officials.
“We have recommended the commission to scrap the registration of those political parties that ignored our directives and did not submit their property details on time,” said Madhu Regmi, the chief of the legal department at the EC.
According to the EC, of the 52 political parties that submitted their property details, seven did so without following the due process.
Three parties that were formed recently were not bound to submit their property details this fiscal year.
The commission had formed two separate committees—one steering committee led by Election Commissioner Dolakh Bahadur Gurung and a functional committee led by Regmi—to verify the sources of income and expenditure submitted by the parties.
Gurung said commissioners have been studying the report separately and will soon make public the names of the defiant parties and nature of action.
In its report, the functional committee has also asked the EC to take ‘stringent action’ against parties that collected wealth from undisclosed sources.
It is learnt that the parties have been categorised under four groups: 1) parties submitting finance details on time 2) parties failing to follow due procedures 3) parties responding after EC’s clarification, and 4) parties not submitting the details.
All political parties are required to make public their sources of income and their expenditure within the first six months of the end of a fiscal year. None of the political parties had submitted their financial details since the Constituent Assembly Elections in 2008.
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