By IANS,
Kathmandu : Nepal’s former Maoist guerrillas, who had pledged not to call any more general strikes, have gone back on their word and called for a nationwide strike on Monday to pressure the government into scrapping a controversial passport deal with India.
“We condemn the deal struck by the government with an Indian company to print machine-readable (Nepali) passports, which goes against Nepal’s national security,” Maoist chief and former prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda said in a statement issued after a meeting of the top leaders of the party late Thursday night.
“We are asking the government to scrap the deal.”
Prachanda said his party would enforce a nationwide general strike on Monday to press for the “revoking of such an anti-nation step and the dissolution of the anti-nation government”.
The former revolutionary said the decision to give the passport printing contract to the India company violated Nepal’s Public Procurement Act and went against parliament, whose members had twice asked the government not to go ahead with the deal.
The student wing of the Maoists began street protests against the awarding of the contract to state undertaking Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India.
On Thursday, Maoist students led a torch rally in Kathmandu while youth leader Lekhnath Neupane said the protests would fan out to the districts from Saturday.
The controversy began in January after the foreign ministry cancelled a bidding process started in 2004.
Nepal had floated a global tender to print three million modern machine-readable passports that are to replace the current handwritten ones to meet the norms of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
Four foreign companies were shortlisted but the process was delayed due to protracted political crises in Nepal and the fall of at least four governments.
In January, Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala persuaded the government to cancel the bidding process, saying it would take too long and Nepal would fail to meet the April 1 deadline for the new passports.
She said the Indian company would execute the job quickly due to the close diplomatic ties between India and Nepal.
The Indian company was to have delivered about three million new Nepali passports within the next three years, starting from June.
But the deal was opposed by the Public Accounts Committee of parliament, which asked the government twice to proceed with the bidding process.
The controversy has snowballed with yet another parliamentary committee on foreign relations Thursday summoning Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal for an explanation.
Nepal’s Security Council has also reportedly expressed concern, saying the deal would jeopardise Nepal’s national security.
The issue has reached Nepal’s Supreme Court with a lawyer and a law student filing two separate public interest suits against the government and asking the court to scrap the contract.
The court responded by summoning the prime minister and foreign minister Monday.
The row has jeopardised the future of tens of thousands of Nepali workers who go abroad every year in search of livelihood.
Though the foreign ministry said it would issue handwritten new passports with a shorter life span of five years till the row was resolved, the facility would be available only in the capital and Nepal’s missions abroad, leaving thousands in the districts in the lurch.