Kathmandu, June 18: Hridayesh Tripathy of Nepal Sadbhawana Party, taking time from Speaker of the House of Representatives Taranath Ranabhat at today’s meeting of the House, said the citizenship problem will not be solved unless the Constitution is amended adding that the provision for giving naturalised citizenship to people of one’s own country as contained in the bill passed by the House of Representatives at the recommendation of the state affairs committee is improper.

Pradip Kumar Gyawali of the CPN-UML said the government has failed judging by the daily incidents in the past three months, people protesting the issuing of voter identity cards to non-citizens were baton-charged, action was taken against the opposition in Morang out of political vengeance, the government has not been able to do anything about the Maoist problem, and there has been corruption in the purchase of aircraft and over the Mahakali irrigation project.

Narayan Prakash Saud of the Nepali Congress said Maoist activities were increasing in the far western region, some people have been on fast at Bhadrakali after trekking all the way here and the Home Minister did not even mentioned them in his speech on a matter of public importance, and it is not clear whether all of them have bad intentions or only some. He demanded opening of police posts in various parts of Achham, Kailali and Kanchanpur districts in view of the Maoist problem.

Asta Laxmi Shakya of the CPN-UML said there are newspaper reports that parliament is ineffective, MPs and ministers are present there in lesser numbers and MPs are being mocked in public places, and newspapers report that students who came to see parliament in action felt that the activities of the MPs were not decent. If we are to make parliament effective in the interest of the nation, the Prime Minister and all the ministers and MPs should be present in the House.

Dilli Raj Sharma of the Nepali Congress said offices in Kathmandu have closed two days a week for reasons of austerity since last year, but this has resulted in inequality between employees in Kathmandu and those outside the valley and people coming from outside the valley on office related business have to wait two days if the work is not completed by Friday. Therefore, the two days leave provision should be abolished.

Ganga Prasad Nepal of the CPN-UML said the poor attendence by MPs in parliament is due to the government‘s irresponsibility towards parliament, and even the rulings of the Speaker are not heeded. He demanded the immediate dispatching of doctors to Sindhuli as there is no doctor at Sindhuli district hospital.

Yagyajit Shaha of Nepal Sadbhawana Party said some persons including Shankar Tiwari have kidnapped the VDC chairman of Tummuwa village in Rupandehi-5. The Police Sub-inspector at the Ilaka police office was also abused and driven away when he went to free him. No action has been taken even though the Home Minister, the SP and the CDO has been informed.

Dilli Raj Khanal of CPN-UML said the report of the committee constituted to study the NRB, RBB and Nepal Bank Limited should be presented and action taken against the foul players indicated.

Referring to the announcement made by former prime minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai on laying out Butwal as a model town and the budgets apportioned in the past for that purpose, Yadav Bahadur Rayamajhi of CPN-UML complained that no concrete programme was put forth for this purpose this year apart from some money allotted under the town development project.

He further called for electrification in Palpa district.

Ramchandra Tiwari of Nepali Congress said that terrorist activities and the killing of the innocent progeny of the poor who joined the police service were on the rise time while the Prime Minister is calling for a dialogue with the Maoists. He said he suspected that they were stepping up their activities with a view to weaken the government.

Sherdhan Rai of CPN-UML said the government did not pay heed towards repatriation of the body of Kumar Rai of Khotang Chyandanda VDC who died in Saudi Arabia even 3 months after his death.

Gokarna Raj Bista of the same party said the attention of the Public Accounts Committee had been drawn to the purchase of a plane for the Royal Nepal Army in disregard of the necessary formalities and asked whether a recent report about this in a weekly was bought out to cover up the issue.

MP Ratna Prasad Sharma Naeupane demanded that the government take initiative to rescue four students in Jajarkot who were beat up and abducted from their classroom by Maoists. He asked what development had taken place over the dialogue between the high level Maoists problem resolution committee and a team named by the Maoists.

Sohan Prasad Chaudhari of the same party said multi-party democracy had provided power, position, homes and pajeros to the Nepali Congress but not democratic culture and referred to the attempt by the ruling party to implicate CPN-UML party workers in false charges including a robbery that took place recently at Amarpatti VDC.

Rajendra Kharel of Nepali Congress asked whether the Maoists dared to make disclosures about people who had gone missing at their hands since similar disclosures by the government about those gone missing at its hands is one of the conditions stated for the proposed talk. He referred to the disappearance of the Panchkhal VDC chairman elected on a CPN-UML ticket some 6-7 months ago who whereabouts are still unknown.

Gorakha Bahadur Bogati of CPN-UML accused Radio Nepal of airing in an inaccurate or distorted fashion news about issues raised by the MPs at the House.

Speaker Taranath Ranabhat, issuing a directive over this complaint, called for not repeating of such mistakes.