The committee in its meeting Friday decided to summon Koirala on March 21. [break]
She had accused the PAC members of giving wrong directives to her ministry in connection with the tender for printing machine-readable passports (MRP). She is openly lobbying in favor of awarding the printing contract to India.
The meeting has rejected the Ministry of Foreign Affairs´ (MoFA) request to review the committee´s previous decision on the printing of MRPs.
The PAC meeting Friday reiterated that its previous directive to the ministry to select one of the four pre-qualified companies to print MRPs would only be a valid procedure as per the law.
The PAC on February 25 had directed the ministry to follow the bidding procedures instead of directly awarding the printing contract to India.
Writing to the parliamentary committee on March 3, the ministry had asked the PAC to review the decision stating it was not practically possible to implement the decision.
“The committee has decided not to review the decision. Today´s [Friday] meeting decided to issue directive to the government to implement the committee´s decision and furnish details about the progress made,” PAC secretary Som Bahadur Thapa told myrepublica.com.
Friday´s meeting was called even in the absence of committee chairman Ram Krishna Yadav, who left for Europe visit together with Minister Koirala. She returned home Thursday cut short the visit. Committee´s oldest member Ram Narayan Singh chaired Friday´s meeting.
A cabinet meeting on February 25 had decided to direct MOFA to introduce MRPs through government-to-government deal indicating green signal to the deal with India.
The cabinet decision on MRPs had come hours after the PAC [on the same day] directed the ministry to revive the aborted international bidding process for MRP project. On December 15 last year, the ministry had canceled the bidding process, citing technical reasons, though four international security printers had been short-listed.
Nepal, as a member of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a UN agency, is required to introduce MRPs by April 1. Non-machine readable passports can be issued only till March 31 and they will be acceptable till November 24, 2015.
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