The ruling and opposition parties have agreed to form an 11-member parliamentary committee to investigate into allegations against Finance Minister Janardan Sharma.
According to CPN-UML Chief Whip Bishal Bhattarai, the parties reached such an agreement during a discussion held at the federal parliament building at New Baneshwor on Wednesday afternoon.
“Agreement has been reached to form a parliamentary investigation committee. Names are being collected now,” said Bhattarai.
The parliamentary committee will have four lawmakers from CPN-UML as its members. Similarly, there will be two members each from Nepali Congress and CPN (Maoist Center), and one each from CPN (Unified Socialist), Janata Samajwadi Party and Loktantrik Samajwadi Party.
Speaker Agni Sapkota will inform during the House of Representatives meeting who the members of the committee are.
Bhattarai said that Finance Minister Sharma will be automatically removed from his post after the parliamentary committee is formed to investigate allegations against him.
“The finance minister should resign. We are still firm on this demand. He will be automatically removed from his post after the parliamentary investigation committee is formed,” said Bhattarai.
Finance Minister Sharma has been accused of inviting unauthorized persons to the Finance Ministry to change tax rates at the time of finalizing the budget. He has denied the allegations.
He courted another controversy when the Finance Ministry, responding to a right to information (RTI) request seeking closed-circuit TV (CCTV) footage of the night before the budget presentation, said that it does not have CCTV footage of more than 13 days.
