House forms committee to probe cooperative fraud

Kathmandu / May 28: The House of Representatives on Tuesday formed a seven-member parliamentary committee to investigate cooperative fraud.

Speaker Devraj Ghimire announced the formation of the committee at the meeting of the lower house.

The committee is headed by CPN-UML lawmaker Surya Thapa.

Members include Sarita Bhusal of UML, Ishwari Neupane and Badri Pandey of the Nepali Congress, Lekhnath Dahal of the CPN (Maoist Centre), Shishir Khanal of the Rastriya Swatantra Party and Dhruba Bahadur Pradhan of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party.

Earlier today, the task force formed to draft the terms of reference (ToR) for a parliamentary probe panel on cooperative scams agreed on the panel’s jurisdiction.

The committee was formed as per the demand of the main opposition Nepali Congress that had been demanding such a committee to probe cooperative fraud and had even been obstructing parliamentary proceedings demanding the same. The parliament had seen prolonged deadlock as the ruling and opposition parties had differing views over the jurisdiction of the committee.

The main opposition party demanded that the name of Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane should be mentioned in the committee’s jurisdiction as he was allegedly involved in the embezzlement of millions of rupees from multiple cooperatives while he headed the Gorkha Media Network before joining the politics. But the ruling parties, mainly the Rastriya Swatantra Party of Lamichhane and the CPN-UML, strongly opposed the proposal to specifically mention his name.

After weeks-long negotiations, the two sides agreed to mention the name of the media company and remain silent about his name while defining the committee’s jurisdiction.