Capital spared of load shedding

KATHMANDU, April 26 (PR) - This week’s pre-monsoon rains and climbing mercury has helped Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) escape the wrath of business communities and households forced to spend their days without power. The state-owned power entity today announced an end to daytime power cuts or load shedding in Kathmandu Valley.

NEA said in a statement Thursday that daytime power cuts slapped since early April has been ceased in the Valley from today and will be gradually stopped in other parts of the country as well. "If this improvement in the flow of water continues then the load shedding will be removed from other parts as well," said a statement issued by NEA.

It added that the duration of the daytime power cut sessions would be reduced with the growing water discharge levels in the country’s snow-fed rivers, the major source of hydro electricity generated and distributed by NEA.

The state power entity was cutting off power supplies for six hours during daytime in an attempt to prevent black outs during peak morning and evening time.

It was facing a shortfall of around 600,000 units of electricity.

However, the scenario has changed. Due to Wednesday night’s rain and rising mercury. According to data made available by NEA Managing Director Bishnu Bam Malla, power generation in Lower Marshyangdi hydroelectric plant has risen by 200,000 units. Likewise, output from Khimti I has increased to 26 megawatts up from 20 while power generation from Bhote Koshi plant climbed to 20 from 14 megawatts.

And water level in the country’s only reservoir-type hydroelectric plant - Kulekhani rose by 6 centimeters Thursday. Water level there was hovering at around 1487 meters till Sunday. The minimum discharge level of the Kulekhani reservoir is 1482.5 meters. "There will be no power cuts if the weather continues to favour us," Malla told The Kathmandu Post.

If not, the nearly 15 per cent population of the country, that has access to electricity will have to wait till the monsoon rains arrive in the second week of June for uninterrupted power supply. These consumers together consume little more than 300 megawatts of electricity, while more power plants are coming online.

Former RNAC chief, Board member arrested

By Damakant Jayshi

KATHMANDU, April 26 – In a far reaching decision on the infamous Lauda Air deal, Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) ordered Hari Bhakta Shrestha, former Executive Chairman of RNAC and Tirthalal Shrestha, Board member, into custody today.

The two were taken into custody after they failed to provide a bail of Rs 50 million each that CIAA asked them to submit.

The constitutional watchdog body also asked former Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Tarini Dutt Chataut to submit his passport to the Commission. He signed papers agreeing to submit it on Friday. Significantly, the former Minister has also been barred from moving out of the Kathmandu Valley without prior permission from CIAA. Chataut could not be reached for his comments.

Both the former RNAC chief and Board member cried foul over the CIAA move, saying it was a "deliberate attempt to victimize us by asking to submit such an unprecedented and astronomical amount of bail at the eleventh hour."

Both were whisked away at 9 p.m. to Hanumandhoka, the District Police Headquarters in a police vehicle Ba.1.Jha 4988 after a marathon nine-hour long interrogation that ended at 6.30 p.m. Then the Commissioners were closeted and at 8.15 p.m., the Shrestha duo were asked to submit either the cash or papers of their fixed assets. This was because, said CIAA Secretary Khemraj Nepal, RNAC management informed the Commission that the Corporation had incurred a monthly loss of Rs 75 million in operating the Lauda Air.

Secretary Nepal also said that the two were asked to submit the amount for their role in causing losses to the RNAC. "This is a preliminary action against these officials for their prima facie involvement." RNAC management had written to the CIAA ON April 12 about the losses to the state-owned Corporation due to the controversial B-767 jet deal.

When asked if the sudden developments were prompted by the petitions filed recently by the Shrestha duo, Secretary Nepal told The Kathmandu Post, "partly yes, but it also has to do with the ongoing investigation."

According to highly placed source in the Commission, the constitutional body will soon file cases against the officials involved in leasing the aircraft. The two officials were taken into custody as they were the ones to sign the agreement. "During the preliminary investigations, the duo seem to have indulged in irregularities in the deal." Requesting anonymity, the source said that the Commission had already taken too long and it was a due by now.

When asked if some more would be detained or asked to submit bail amount, he did not rule out the possibility.

However, both the Shresthas told The Kathmandu Post that they became victims due to their petitions filed to the Commission last week.

The duo has argued in their petitions that they had signed the Lauda deal at the behest of the Cabinet and had pleaded for an impartial probe. The constitutional watchdog body had almost reached a conclusion on the deal after its cross-examination of the former civil aviation minister and former and current ministry and the RNAC officials. Minister Chataut had remarked that the petitions could be a result of "fear and terror or due to temptation".

"I was interrogated until 6.30 p.m. and only at 8.15 p.m. I was asked to provide such an impossible amount," said the former while boarding the police vehicle. "How can a ordinary official like me submit such a huge amount? We asked for 24 hours’ time but the Chief Commissioner told us that they had taken the decision to detain us if we failed to furnish the sum. This is a big injustice."

Tirthalal Shrestha also alleged that they had become "targets of politics" for acting as per the Cabinet decision in leasing the aircraft. "They told me that I was the convenor of the team that went to Vienna to sign the agreement and also because I signed as a witness. I was not the convenor. The CIAA had summoned others too, but only we two are being detained." He demanded impartial investigation of all, "from top to bottom".

Significantly, the police were stationed at the CIAA premises since Wednesday. The CIAA also questioned another Board member Gaurinath Sharma today.

On Wednesday, the CIAA summoned, Secretary Barun Prasad Shrestha, the then officiating Secretary Kumar Poudel and Joint Secretary Yagya Prasad Gautam and two Board members Siddha Raj Joshi and Rameshwar Khanal. According to the sources, all of them reiterated their version on the deal that they had given to the Commission earlier.

Storm kills 6 in Chitwan

Post Report

CHITWAN, April 26 - At least four people, including a 16-day baby, were killed and two others sustained serious injuries in three VDCs of this southern Terai district as a result of storm on Wednesday evening, according to the District Police Office.

Police said that the nursing mother and her baby were killed when a sal tree collapsed on her house. Lila Nepali died in a nearby community forest after being hit by the branch of a tree.

Likewise, Bhusuni Chaudhary succumbed to the heap of wooden beams and corrugated sheets of a neighbouring house blown away by the stormy wind.

Similarly, property worth Rs 600,000 was burned to a cinder when a fire caught two houses at Dedhuwa village of Bhandara VDC-9 on Wednesday’s stormy weather.

According to the police, the fire destroyed Bharat Prasad Timilsina’s house, shed and four cows and his neighbour Kanka Jung Pande’s poultry farm with 500 hens, one water buffalo and a cattle shed.

Meanwhile, our correspondent from Biratnagar stated that two policemen were injured in lightning at Ghoretar of the Ratibas VDC in southern Bhojpur district yesterday. Those hit by the thunderbolt are head constable Raj Kumar Bista and constable Chandra Bahadur Basnet, who were airlifted to Kosi Zonal Hospital in Biratnagar for treatment. The doctors attending the cops suspect symptoms of paralysis on some parts of their bodies.

Subsidy removal: Is it justified?

By Bhaskar Sharma

KATHMANDU, April 26- At a time when the government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) are at loggerheads over the proposed reintroduction of subsidy in Shallow Tube Wells (STWs), experts say that irrigation subsidy is necessary for an agrarian economy like Nepal blighted by low irrigation facility.

With only 20 per cent of the total arable land supplied with irrigation facility, and the large scale surface irrigation schemes being expensive and time consuming, experts argue STWs are the only viable alternatives to achieve a target set by 20-year long Agriculture Perspective Plan (APP). APP, which aims to revamp the stagnant agriculture sector and reduce the poverty incidence from current 42 per cent to 14 per cent by 2017, targets to irrigate 612, 000 hectares of land during the plan period.

But achievements so far are depressingly low.

"For the successful implementation of APP, subsidy is necessary. However, the subsidy should be time bound and the budget should be enough to cater to the demand," says Dr Shankar Sharma, member of National Planning Commission (NPC).

The ADB had successfully coaxed the government to scrap subsidy in micro irrigation schemes since last year along with the subsidy in chemical fertilizer.

ADB sailed through its idea of subsidy removal mainly arguing on two fronts: First, that the inadequate allocation of subsidy was hampering the supply STWs and chemical fertilizer. Second, continuation with the subsidy "that is beyond the fiscal capacity of the government" would eventually invite fiscal crisis. The bank had also argued that subsidy removal would benefit the farmers through increased supply of these inputs.

However, empirical data do not justify these claims.

Installation of STWs’ has not increased after the elimination of subsidy. It has shrunk instead. Only 23 STWs have been installed so far in this fiscal year out of the targeted 4300 STWs.

ADB has failed to explain satisfactorily the reason behind the cause of decline in the supply of STWs, which it had argued the other way round. " It will take some time before the supply of STWs recoups and increases thereafter," agrees Dr Richard Vokes, Resident Representative of the ADB.

However, it is unlikely that the time-lag is only the reason behind the failure of the ADB prescription. Experts argue, the recent trends in the use of STWs clearly show that the farmers with low purchasing power would shun such expensive STWs.

ADB’s argument of "fiscal crisis" also seems equally unfounded. With the total subsidies in agriculture assuming Rs 500 million, it is implausible that reintroduction of subsidy in STWs would invite a risk of fiscal crisis.

Simple arithmetic shows that Rs 500 million would be just 0.5 per cent of the annual budget (assuming the budget to be Rs 100 billion).

"Nepal is among the countries with the lowest subsidy bill (less than 2 per cent of GDP). If anchoring micro irrigation schemes with subsidy helps farmers we should do it; there is no threat of fiscal crisis," says Sharma.

Furthermore it is not only a question of affordability. Sometimes necessity becomes so overpowering that the country can only ill-afford to neglect it. Perhaps that is why even the supposedly illiberal international Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), recognizes the need to subside the inputs for the farmers of economically poor countries. However, the ADB not only fails to recognize this fact but also fails to understand that even the developed countries are subsidizing their farmers.

That is exactly what our next door neighbour India recognizes and has retained agriculture subsidy. Agriculture subsidy bill in India is about 7 per cent of the annual budget.

Experts argue that the subsidy removal prescription is also unlikely to work unless India does the same.

However, Vokes says, "Nepal cannot afford to copy India."

One of the major reasons for the failure of the subsidy revocation in encouraging greater use of irrigation facilities is the porous border that Nepal shares with India. Even with customs tariff of 10 per cent in agro-products, the dominant Indian economy with its cheaper agro-products has made it impossible for Nepali products to survive in the open markets.

Buddha was born in Nepal: Archaeologists

Post Report

KATHMANDU, April 26 - The controversy surrounding the actual birthplace of Lord Buddha — Tilaurakot of Nepal or Pipprahawa of India — is finally over. British archeologists have determined that Lord Buddha was indeed born in Tilaurakot of Lumbini in Nepal. The finding backs the popular belief in Nepal that the ‘Light of Asia’ was born in Tilaurakot in the district of Kapilvastu more than 2,500 years ago.

According to newsreports circulated across world media this week, Britain’s University of Bradford archeologist Robin Coningham and Armin Schmidt have unearthed artifacts in a 13-foot-deep trench "beneath a swatch of gentle woodland" demonstrating that the site was inhabited during the Buddha’s lifetime and perhaps even earlier. The finding is a result of joint research carried out in the past three years by UNESCO’s World Heritage committee and the government of Nepal.

The key was pieces of ceramic painted greyware, used in South Asia between the 9th and 6th centuries, The Washington Post said quoting one of the researchers in a commentary posted on April 23. "The sight is clearly right at the center of the Buddhist holyland," the paper quoted Coningham as saying. "It’s the only fortified site, it’s the only urban site around and there are no rivals in the region."

However, India claims that Pipprahawa, which lies about 600 yards south of the Nepal-India border and four miles from Tilaurakot, is the birthplace of the Buddha. This followed the 1972 unearthing of a casket containing human remains and coins bearing the legend: "Here is the Bihar of the monk of Kapilvastu" beneath a Buddhist stupa there.

While the Tilaurakot site "represents the best preserved provincial urban hinterland in South Asia", Pipprahawa, by contrast, is "clearly a monastic site," Coningham said according to the Post. The archeologists’ team was led by Nepal’s chief archaeologist, Kosh Acharya.

The search for Kapilvastu began in the late 1800 after archaeologists unearthed a stone pillar erected in Lumbini in 249 B.C. by the Indian Emperor Ashoka to commemorate the Buddha’s birthplace, according to the paper. Lumbini is Nepal’s one of the two cultural World Heritage sites recognized by the UN’s Education, Science and Culture Organization. The other culture site is the Kathmandu Valley.

European Scholars subsequently surveyed the region in an attempt to match its contemporary geography with early accounts of the Buddha’s life, and with the journey of the Chinese monks who traveled to Kapilvastu in the 4th and 7th centuries A.D. "The westerners found little help on site, because Buddhism had all but disappeared from an area that had become a buffer zone between the Nepali state and the (British Raj)," Coningham told the paper. "It was very much a wilderness, there were tigers there."

According to Coninghan, there is an intact gate on the western side of the site and fired brick walls, but all of this is from a "later phase" of occupation. The inhabitants of the Buddha’s time built their structures of wood. Buddha is believed to have died in 483 B.C. when no central religious authority was established.

The paper said, "Thus far, there is little indication that the dispute is over. India has long conducted tours to Pipprahawa, and last year Coningham said at least 1,500 pilgrims visited the dig at Tilaurakot during the six weeks he was working there, among them several monks who scooped handfuls of clay to take with them."

It added, "The Bradford discoveries, resulting from deeper and more extensive digging, will bring Tilaurakot firmly back into the competition. But they are not likely to settle an argument in which nationalism and the quest for tourist dollars ultimately play as large a role as science."

"For although Nepal has charged that the earlier Indian work was politically motivated, India will likely say the same now, because the Bradford excavation was financed through the Nepalese government by the United Nation’s World Heritage preservation program."

JVT verifies 233 Bhutanese refugee families in one month

Post Report

BHADRAPUR, April 26 - The Nepal-Bhutan Joint Verification Team (JVT), verifying the Bhutanese refugees languishing in eastern Nepal over a decade, has verified a total of 1,380 people from 233 families, in over a month.

The JVT started the refugee verification on March 26 following the several rounds of talks between authorities of both countries.

Currently, the team has been verifying refugee families living in Khudunabari refugee camp at its Damak-based office and they are brought by bus every day.

Refugee leaders say that it would take another six years to verify over 100,000 refugees languishing in the seven camps if the only one team is assigned to do so.

Asked to comment on the current pace of the verification, Chairman of the Bhutan-Gorkha National Liberation Front (BGNLF), DB Rana Sangpang, said that the more the process is delayed the more problems both countries will have to face in the future.

Sangpang urged that both the countries should initiate fresh dialogues to accelerate the pace of verification process.

"We want early repatriation to our country. For this, the verification process should speed up," said Sangpang.

SB Subba, Chairman of the Bhutanese Refugee Repatriation Committee, also said that another round owf joint ministerial level meeting has to be held to add more verification teams to complete the process on time.

Most of the refugees seem to be optimistic about their repatriation to their country though it may take a long time to complete the verification process.

Bus overturned, four dead

DEKHURI, April 26 (PR) - Four people travelling in a Butwal-bound bus from Nepalgunj died instantly after the bus overturned on the East-West highway about 10 km east from Lamahi, according to the Lamahi-based area police office.

Those killed in the accident are one women and three children whose names and addresses are yet to be confirmed, said Lila Gharti, an employee of the Rapti Bus Entrepreneurs’ Committee in Lamahi, after returning from the site of the accident.

Police have taken the bus driver, Nilakantha Gyawali, who also sustained injuries, into custody for investigation. Condition of other injured in the accident was unclear.

Gharti said the bus (Lu 1 Kha 2208) overturned after the driver accelerated its speed to avoid the one-and-half hours long chakka jam (traffic strike) called today noon by the six leftist parties demanding the resignation of the Prime Minster on charges of corruption. ??