The House of Representatives (HoR) meeting on Wednesday has formed a parliamentary special committee to investigate into allegations of budget tampering against Finance Minister Janardan Sharma.
Speaker Agni Sapkota had proposed the names of 11 lawmakers received from various parties for members of the parliamentary investigation committee during the HoR meeting.
The 11-member committee has four members from CPN-UML, two each from Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN (Maoist Center), and one each from CPN (Unified Socialist), Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) and Loktantrik Samajwadi Party (LSP).
Khagaraj Adhikari, Pradeep Gyawali, Bhanubhakta Dhakal and Bimala BK are the members of the committee from UML.
Similarly, the committee has Pushpa Bhusal Gautam and Sitaram Mahato from NC, Dev Gurung and Shakti Basnet from Maoist Center, Sarala Kumari Yadav from Unified Socialist, Surendra Yadav from JSP and Laxman Lal Karna from LSP.
Speaker Sapkota said that the committee has been formed to investigate the truth about reports that Finance Minister Sharma had invited unauthorized persons to the ministry to change tax rates at the time of finalizing the budget.
Earlier on Wednesday afternoon, the ruling and opposition parties had agreed to form an 11-member parliamentary committee to investigate into allegations against Finance Minister Sharma, according to CPN-UML Chief Whip Bishal 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.
