London High Court rejects Gurkhas’ claim
GAESO says its concerns are addressed

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KATHMANDU, Feb 22 : The London High Court on Friday rejected Gurkhas’ claim that they are entitled to the same pay, pensions and perks as their British army counterparts, but the Gurkha Army Ex-Servicemen’s Association (GAESO) said that the court verdict has addressed the former and present Gurkhas’ concerns.

"We have not lost the case," Mahendra Lal Rai, the secretary of the GAESO told The Sunday Post Saturday. "The court has said that there is a huge disparity between the cost of living in Britain and Nepal. But now the issue can be settled out-of-the-court - through talks between Britain’s Ministry of Defence and GAESO."

"If that fails again, then we may have to go to the court of appeal," he added.

After days of hearing, the court on Friday rejected the Gurkhas’ claim that they were entitled to the same pay, pensions and perks as their British army counterparts, according to agency reports. Judge Jeremy Sullivan ruled that the disparity between the cost of living in Britain and Nepal was too great for the claim to succeed.

Referring to pensions, he said, "It would be wholly irrational to fail to have regard to the wholly different circumstances that exist in Nepal and the United Kingdom. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world."

Meanwhile, the British embassy in Kathmandu said in a statement today that the judge also acknowledged the proactive approach of the Ministry of Defence in constantly reviewing terms of service against the principles laid down in the (1947) tri-partite agreement - between Nepal, India and the United Kingdom.

The outcome, according to the statement, lifts a number of uncertainties facing the Brigade for some time. "And (it) allows the Brigade of Gurkhas, as an integral part of the British Army, to focus on preparing for operations including the Gulf and Sierra Leone."

"The ruling reinforces, thus enabling the continued recruitment of Gurkhas into the British Army and the ongoing provision of welfare and free medical support to our ex-servicemen in Nepal."

The GAESO, meanwhile, has welcomed the court verdict, saying it has paved the way for ending all kinds of discriminations against former and present Gurkhas soldiers. "The court has ruled that the tri-partite agreement should be reviewed in such a way as to ensure equality in pay, perks and other facilities to the Gurkhas," the statement says.

The feared fighters who hail from the Himalayan foothills have served with the British army since 1815, battling through many bloody encounters in two world wars as well as serving more recently in the Falklands, the Gulf War, Kosovo and East Timor.

Currently there are more than 3,500 Gurkhas serving in the British army. But until 1998, there were 10,000 of them, who were serving with the British army. But while pay and conditions for their British counterparts have kept pace with modern times, former and present Gurkhas say they are shackled by a colonial era agreement.

The group of seven soldiers involved in the test case that ended on Friday in London’s High Court were represented by Cherie Booth, the barrister wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said in London that last year there were 27,000 applicants for 230 places in the Gurkha regiments.

Had the Gurkhas’ succeeded in their claim, experts say, the British government would have faced a bill of more than $1 billion to compensate past and current Gurkhas.

In November last year, in a separate claim, three elderly retired Gurkhas who survived years in Japanese prison camps in World War II won a High Court challenge to the government’s decision not to extend prisoner of war compensation payments to Gurkhas. The court ruled that decision had been "racist".

The former and present Gurkhas had filed cases primarily against four types of discriminations. They were also preparing to claim compensation from the British government for over 1,000 ex-Gurkha prisoners of war.

Experts express concern over worsening air quality

By Kiran Chapagain & Subodh Gautum

NEW DELHI, Feb 22 : While environmentalists, doctors, scientists and journalists from South Asia gathered here for a regional workshop expressed their serious concerns over the deteriorating air quality in their respective cities, Chief Minister of Delhi, Shiela Dikshit has urged the cities in the sub-continent to join hands to protest the import and use of polluting vehicles and to introduce cleaner energy vehicles.

"Cities of the member countries of South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) should stand united against dumping of polluting technology from developed countries," the Chief Minister said. "We can even forge a network among the cities in the region to combat vehicular air pollution that our cities are facing".

She said this at a meeting with environmentalists and environment journalists from Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka, gathered here for a two-day workshop on "Vehicular Air Pollution" at the Indian capital of Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in South Asia, to discusses vehicular pollution in South Asia.

The experts in the workshop that concluded here today shared the same problems of degradation of air quality resulting from chemicals and other materials occurring in the air, thanks to polluting engines, poor quality fuel, resulting from adulteration, weak pollution controlling laws and lack of political will to control pollution and improper traffic management.

Besides, they have identified insufficient ambient air quality monitoring initiatives and low awareness level on poor air quality they are breathing.

"The governments in the region are not taking sufficient initiatives to maintain air quality in their respective cities and they lack political will," Piyal Parakarama, President of Green Party in Sri Lanka told The Kathmandu Post. "They need to adopt integrated approach to lower pollution level and launch awareness programmes".

There are few studies being carried to know the level of pollution in different cities in the region. In Nepal, the government is setting up pollution monitoring boards with support from Danish donor agency,

DANIDA and will be providing the level of pollutants in Kathmandu valley by the end of this month. Inidia has already set up such stations, which are providing air pollution result to people. In other countries of the region, Bangaldesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives this type of initiatives have not begun, according to journalists participating in the workshop from the countries.

But, they told The Kathmandu Post that they are going to set up trans-boundary pollution monitoring stations in their countries as per Male Declaration. Nepal is also taking initiative to abide by the Declaration. However, DK Biswas, chairperson of Central Pollution Control Board of India suggests carrying out more studies on air pollution in the region, as the present studies are insufficient to formulate plans to check air pollution. He also underlines an urgent need to improve public transportation system, which can considerably lower the present pollution level.

Bhusan Tuladhar sharing the success story of electric vehicles in Nepal at the workshop urged the participants to learn from Nepal and introduce zero-emission electric vehicles in their respective countries. Thirty three participants from the four five countries of South Asia discussed at great length on alternative fuel, challenges in maintaining and improving fuel quality, phasing out polluting vehicles, electric vehicle, regulating air pollution in fiscal way and hazards of pollution on health. The also lauded the success of electric vehicles in Nepal and compressed natural gas (CNG) in India as the alternative of diesel and petrol-run vehicles. There are nearly six hundred electric-driven vehicles in Nepal.

Some participants in the workshop suggested adopting fiscal ways to curb the threat of pollution in the cities of the region, following the anti-pollution activists slogan of ‘polluter pays principle’. " We should think about economic measures like congestion charges, environment excise duty to check vehicular emission," said Shreekant Gupta, economist at Delhi School of Economics.

But doctors attending the workshop gave different suggestion to tackle polluting vehicles, "We should make people aware of health hazards resulting from pollution," says Dr. Twisha Lahiri, head of the Department of Neuro-endocrinology, Chittaranjan Cancer Institute, Kolkata.

"Studies have shown that air pollution affects respiratory system, reproductive system, contributing to increased mortality. It has neurological effects and affects children and pregnant women," Dr. Lahiri said. "Experts in the region now should carry out study in this regard," Dr. Lahari opines.

However, Sunita Narain, Director of Center for Science and Environment, India, an environment-related non-governmental organization, which hosted the workshop, holds radical opinion in checking vehicular pollution. "The only way to check pollution is to control the number of vehicles, discourage private vehicles," she says, focusing on well-informed and participating media for an anti-pollution campaign in the region.

PM leaves for NAM Summit

KATHMANDU, Feb 22 (PR)-Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand today left for the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, to take part in the two-day summit meeting of the 13th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) on February 24-25.

Speaking to reporters at the VVIP bay at the Tribhuvan International Airport before his departure, Prime Minister Chand said, "We will express our views on how to make the organisation more effective."

He also said that Nepal would reiterate its position that NAM was "more or less the basis of our foreign policy." Chand added that he would speak more on his return after the summit meeting.

The preliminary meetings leading to the summit began last.

UML presses for unanimous stand on all-party Govt

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KATHMANDU, Feb 22 : General secretary of Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), Madhav Kumar Nepal, has said that endorsement of his party’s stand for an all-party government by other political parties as well will lead to the solution of the current political crises.

Talking to journalists after his meeting with Nepali Congress president Girija Prasad Koirala at the latter’s residence today, Nepal said, "Political parties should not delay any further in endorsing our stand."

Nepal also said that the meeting was held in order to prepare a unanimous voice among all the parliamentary parties for peace and democracy. "We urged Koirala to make his party’s stand for the formation of an all-party government."

The UML has been maintaining that the formation of an all-party national government is only an outlet to resolve the current political impasse.

However, Nepal said Koirala did not speak anything on the CPN-UML’s demand for the formation of an all-party government during the meeting.

According to Nepal, the NC chief will give his party’s views vis-à-vis the formation of an all-party government as demanded by UML after he returns from Biratnagar, his hometown. Koirala left for Biratnagar after his meeting with Nepal.

Govinda Raj Joshi, leader of Nepali Congress who also participated in the meeting, said that the leader duo agreed on the issue of unanimity among all the political forces in order to address the current political crises. "The leaders stressed on the need to safeguard peace and democracy which is at crisis," Joshi said.

NC has been demanding the reinstatement of the dissolved House of Representatives as only the best alternative to resolve all political crises at this time.

The leaders also talked about the impending government-Maoist peace negotiation. Joshi said that both the leaders shared their experience of their meetings with the Maoist leaders. "Both the leaders said that Maoist leaders asked them to cooperate in making the government-Maoist peace negotiation successful."

Other members from the UML attending the meeting were Bharat Mohan Adhikari and Subash Nembang.

Madhesh outfit calls for federal structure of governance

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KATHMANDU, Feb 22 : Madesh Jagaran Abhiyan activists today issued a call for switchover to the federal system of governance to ensure socio-economic transformation, social justice and freedom from institutional victimisation.

"We are not going to swallow the humiliation of over 250 years. No ruling establishment can suppress the aspiration of the ethnic groups," Amresh Narayan Jha, spokesman of the organisation said at the Open Air Theatre, Tundikhel

He also accused the ruling establishment of short-changing the people of the terai on issues ranging from education to socio-economic development.

Claiming that the literacy rate of the terai has gone down by 10 percent in the last 20 years, he claimed that there has been a fall in per capita income of the people of terai owing to the anti-terai policies adopted by successive governments.

Much like other speakers, he advocated the demand for a federal system of governance, which, he claimed, could open the window of opportunity for the people of terai to work hard and reap the reward too.

"We are fit to govern ourselves now. We do not want others to rule over us. We also don’t mind if others elsewhere too follow suit," he thundered, addressing a thin gathering of the people from terai as well as representatives of other ethnic groups.

Speaking on the occasion human rights activist Padma Ratna Tuladhar, vehemently advocated the cause of federal system of governance, which, he too stressed, would be in tune with the demand of the time.

"Human rights say state cannot discriminate against any ethnic group on the basis of language and caste. Ditto the constitution of the country. People have the right to be sovereign citizen regardless of any reasons cited by the state," he said.

Commenting on the slogans with which the demonstrators went round the city before arriving at the Open Air Theatre, Tuladhar said ‘it was ironic to know that people have not yet felt that they were part of the nation’. Earlier a group of student protestors had gone around the city chanting slogans like "We are Nepali" and "We must be treated as such."

He also said that the members of the terai community should organise themselves on political line and get their voice heard at the upcoming round table conference and in the constituent assembly to secure the rights enjoyed by the sovereign people.

"Any constitution, formulated in the near future, must accommodate your aspirations," Tuladhar said, adding that people can be considered as sovereign only if they are involved ion the drafting of the constitution. He also flayed the current constitution as something, which has feudal rings about it.

However, Nepali Congress (NC) Central Working Committee (CWC) member Mahanta Thakur supported the cause of the Madeshiya population with caution.

"The movement to secure the due rights should be waged by the grass-root population," he pointed out, dropping short of flaying the movement as something, which might invite untoward complications.

He also added that the current problems dogging the nation could be attributed to the exclusion of a large section of the people from the national agenda.