M A I N   N E W S

Printing of Passports
Nepal scraps deal with India
Bishnu Budhathoki in Kathmandu

Unable to face mounting pressure from both the ruling and opposition parties at Parliament, the government of Nepal on Sunday decided to nullify its decision to award the contract of printing machine readable passports (MRPs) to an Indian company.

With the main opposition party, Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists, giving a call for a strike to protest against the government decision to award the contract to an Indian company, the Cabinet meeting held at the Prime Minister's official residence decided to scrap its agreement to award the contract to India, a minister said.

However, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Sujata Koirala, who had played a key role in awarding the contract to India, did not attend the Cabinet meeting, expressing her dissatisfaction over the government decision.

On Wednesday, the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament had directed the government to resume a fresh bidding process for printing the MRPs in accordance with the Procurement Act. Earlier, the Supreme Court had directed the government to suspend the passport printing process till the final hearing.

Meanwhile, an Indian official at the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu informed that the India's state-owned Security Printing and Minting Corporation, which had got the contract of printing around 4 million MRPs for three years, had begun the process of procuring raw material and equipment needed for printing the MRPs so as to deliver the passport booklets to Nepal as early as possible.