Nepal Supreme Court orders Govt to suspend Indian contract for passports - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

The Supreme Court of Nepal has issued an interim order asking the government not to proceed with the printing contract of Machine Readable Passport (MRP) on Wednesday. The court, in its order, directed the government to suspend the process until its next hearing, which has been scheduled for Monday. Two separate writ petitions, including one by advocate Hem Mani Subedi, were filed at the apex court on Tuesday demanding cancellation of the contract. The government lent the contract to Indian company at four dollar per piece though the earlier bidders had proposed to supply at as low as 2.99 per piece dollar. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Nepal's Parliament has already objected to the decision. On Monday, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal said the government has awarded the contract for political and diplomatic reasons. He also said the government had failed to move ahead with a decision of the PAC tender process due to time constraints. The PAC had quizzed both Nepal and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala over the decision. Earlier, the PAC's had directed the Foreign Ministry to call for a fresh tender bid to print the MRPs and hand over the contract on the competition basis. Disregarding the PAC directive, the cabinet gave its approval to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to grant the contract to print MRPs to an Indian company on March 19, Nepalnews reported.