The Committee, after failing to take unanimous decision, sent the names back to the Constitutional Council, which will now be free to use its discretion whether to send the names to the President for appointment.
“We could not take a unanimous decision on all the four names, so we decided to send the names back to the Council with our divergent views,” said Nepali Congress Chief Whip in the parliament Laxman Ghimire. As per the procedural law of the Committee, nominees need unanimous approval to get appointment, but it is not mandatory for the Constitutional Council to follow the decision if the committee members are divided.
After three-hour-long hearing, the Committee members refused to clear names of Dr Kayo Devi Yami, Krishna Pokharel, Tika Dutta Niraula and Rajendra Prasad Sah for the commissions.
However, there were no serious allegations against three of them. There were no complaints against Pokharel, a CPN-UML nominee, and Sah, a Madhesi People’s Rights Forum nominee. Yami, a sister of Tourism Minister Hisila Yami, faced a question related to her incompetence when she was appointed National Planning Commission member.
But, Niraula faced a number of complaints including sexual abuse against a woman when he was joint-secretary. The Committee held a lengthy discussion following the hearing on whether to give clean chit to Niraula amid such allegations.
Niraula, however, rejected the allegations outright saying that he never visited Pokhara when he was the joint-secretary as claimed in the complaint against him. He said the allegations were made by those unhappy with his decisions when he was government administrator for a long period of time.
Pokharel and Sah were asked to present their plan to restructure the Public Service Commission when the country is converted into a federal model. Pokharel said there was need for conceptual clarity on whether Nepal wants a committed bureaucracy or a neutral bureaucracy. Sah said the country needed to minimize political influence in bureaucracy to ensure better result from it.
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