KATHMANDU – Oppositions protested in the House of Representatives (HoR) today, accusing of an entry of unofficial people in the Finance Ministry during the budget-making.
A session of the lower house began three hours late of the schedule and once the meeting convened, opposition lawmakers stood from their respective seats as a gesture of their protests over the ‘violation’ of budget formulation rules. As they said, an unauthorised person had access to a confidential chamber in the Ministry during the budget formulation process.
Following the protest, the Speaker gave time to Padam Giri, the chief whip of main opposition CPN (UML) to put his views. Giri said change in tax rates in the budget is capable of serving corporate interests of a certain people, seeking convincing replies from the Finance Minister in the parliament over this matter.
As he said, the overnight imports of electric four-wheelers in a large scale followed the information leak that tax rates were changing.
Rastriya Swatantra Party’s Dr Swarnim Wagle underlined the need of breaking the nexus of a policy corruption. He reminded the House that the then Finance Minister resigned upon facing the same kind of charge in the change of tax rates last year.
He demanded a clear reply from the line minster whether tax rates were changed in a non-transparent way. Rastriya Prajatantra Party Chief Whip Gyan Bahadur Shahi said there were rumours about the corruption in setting and questioned whether unrelated person was involved in course of finalizing the Finance Bill in the night of May 28.
