Kathmandu, April 12 (Inditop.com) After a growing row among Nepal’s major parties resulted in the ruling coalition scrapping a deal with India to print Nepali passports, speculation was rife in Nepal’s media Monday that the imbroglio would lead to the fall of the government.
Avenues Television, a private television channel in Nepal, said the elected government of the Maoists had fallen in May 2009 after its relations with Nepal’s powerful southern neighbour India soured and the Indian government “withdrew support”.
A year later, it said the scenario was almost the same with the Indian establishment stung by Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal’s decision Sunday to scrap a sensitive passport contract with India that the Indians were keen to bag because of their security concerns in Nepal.
After growing opposition by the major parties, the cabinet late Sunday night decided to cancel the agreement signed between India’s Ambassador to Nepal Rakesh Sood and Nepal’s Foreign Secretary Madan Kumar Bhattarai to have nearly four million Nepali passports printed by the state-owned Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India.
Echoing Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala, who had pushed the deal through despite opposition by MPs, the television station conjectured it would affect ties between the two governments and could lead to the collapse of the Nepal government.
The Naya Patrika tabloid added that the prime minister had begun discussing his resignation with party leaders.
After his own party men began a signature campaign for his ouster, Nepal was reconciled to stepping down, the daily said.
The communist leader was pondering whether he should announce his resignation via an address to the nation, as his predecessor Maoist prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda had done in May 2009, or announce it in parliament, the daily said.
Prime Minister Nepal is under mounting pressure, both by his own party as well as the Maoists, to step down and pave the way for a new government.
Though Nepal had earlier said he would not quit till the new constitution is enforced by May 28, it is now increasingly doubtful if the statute would be drafted by then, especially with the Maoists locked in fierce opposition.
