KATHMANDU, July 27: The Good Governance and Monitoring Committee of Parliament formed a five-member probe committee on Tuesday to investigate interference by the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) in the entrance exams at the Kathmandu University School of Medicine held on May 28.

The probe committee includes lawmaker Janakraj Joshi, who was vocal in defending the CIAA during the committee’s discussions regarding the issue.

The House panel formed the probe committee after holding a meeting with the CIAA officials on Tuesday. The committee had discussed the issue with KU officials on Friday.

However, Joshi’s inclusion in the probe committee has raised serious questions as he has been lobbying within the committee that Dr Govinda KC’s demand for impeachment of CIAA chief Lokman Singh Karki is a part of organized effort to weaken the constitutional body like CIAA.

Speaking at Tuesday’s meeting, Joshi said that the issue was blown out of proportion because of the internal conflict in KU and there was no need to pull the CIAA into controversy. 

“The way KU officials and CIAA officials briefed this committee, we can understand that the entrance exam was conducted in mutual understanding and it does not look like the CIAA had intervened the academic autonomy of the university,” claimed Joshi.

“The demands of Dr Govinda KC and the entire game behind it are just a ploy to weaken the constitutional body like CIAA. We should understand that Dr KC has been doing a ‘pig-headed’ politics. The country has already paid a high cost for saving his life,” Joshi added.

He argued that initiating impeachment against any official of a constitutional body should be the prerogative of the parliament and it could not be negotiated outside it.

“It is an organized game-plan to weaken the state organ. We should not forget that there are numbers of ‘Kubermani’ and “Dollarmani’ in this country,” said Joshi.

Having said that, most of the lawmakers, including Joshi, had been demanded a probe into the matter.

The probe committee is asked to present its report to the full committee within 10 days. The probe committee comprises of lawmakers Joshi, Udaya Nepali Shrestha, Narsingh Chaudhary, Padma Narayan Chaudhary and Milan Kumari Rajbanshi. Joshi and Shrestha are former bureaucrats who retired from the post of secretary and were nominated in the Constituent Assembly by the cabinet under the quota of CPN (Maoist Center) and CPN-UML respectively.

CIAA chief and commissioners shun House panel 
The committee, which summoned KU officials on Friday, had summoned CIAA chief Karki, other commissioners and officials on Tuesday but Karki as well as other commissioners shunned the meeting.

Karki, sending a letter to the parliamentary committee, informed that he is ill and doctors have suggested him to refrain from speaking. However, other commissioners neither informed the House panel about why they did not appear in the meeting nor the team that represented the CIAA briefed the committee about their absence. A team led by CIAA Secretary Shantaraj Subedi represented the anti-graft body at the meeting. 

Earlier, Karki had denied appearing in Agriculture and Energy Committee in November 2014 when the House panel had summoned him for his directives to scrap the survey license and generation license of as many as 14 hydropower projects including Kabeli.

Speaking on Tuesday’s meeting, CPN (Maoist Center) lawmaker Aman Lal Modi raised questions over Karki’s absence. “I wish for his speedy recovery so that he could come to the committee when we invite him in future,” said Modi sarcastically.

Modi urged the CIAA to stay within its jurisdiction. “The CIAA should respect certain values. Every citizen is free to put forward his demands. How could CIAA declare Dr KC as mentally instable? Today, a large number of people are protesting on the streets. If the parliament fails to hear them, they will not let us go scot free,” said Modi.

“We cannot say we will not listen to our citizens protesting on the streets. We cannot say we will not represent their voice in the parliament. While talking about parliament’s prerogatives to impeach someone, we should not forget that the very right is also assigned to us by the citizens of this country,” Modi added.

Lawmaker Padma Narayan Chaudhary said that the contradictory statements from CIAA and KU have raised doubts and should be probed by forming a committee.   

“Why did the CIAA reached the KU on the very day of the entrance exam? What was the reason behind KU appointing the experts taken there by the CIAA in the exam committee? How could the CIAA claim the examination conducted under its surveillance was fair when there are reports that a relative of one of the experts topped the examination?” questioned CPN-UML lawmaker Harka Bol Rai.

At the beginning of the meeting, CIAA Secretary Subedi had claimed that the exam was conducted by the expert committee formed by the KU itself. “The commission, taking care of the autonomy of the university and consensus of KU officials, had inspected and monitored the process of developing question papers and examination by remaining on the periphery of the university,” claimed Subedi during the meeting.

However, the KU officials had briefed the House panel that a CIAA team, which comprised of joint-secretary Shankar Thapa, deputy-secretary Gorakh Shahi, CIAA’s health advisor

Dr Nil Mani Upadhyaya, Nepal Police DIG Nawaraj Silwal and eight doctors had visited the KU School of Medical Science two days before the entrance exam and intervened in the examination process.

“Claiming that they had received complaints about irregularities in the entrance exam, the CIAA team came to the university. By then, we had two options - either to confront and file a lawsuit or to seek a practical solution for the future of the 1,600 students,” KU Registrar Bhola Thapa had told the committee during Friday’s meeting.

“There were eight doctors in the CIAA team. Among them, four were regular examinees in KU while the other two were faculty members of other universities and the remaining two were doctors from Nepal Police. Rather than confronting, we decided to appoint them in our examination board. They chose question from our question bank and the KU held the entrance exam accordingly owning up the entire process,” Thapa had explained to the committee.

 
• house
 
• committee
 
• probe
 
• ciaa
 
• intervention
 
• ku
 
• exams