Nepal Govt revokes passport printing deal with India - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

The Nepal Government has revoked its decision to give the contract of printing Machine-Readable Passports (MRPs) to India. A cabinet meeting held on Sunday evening at the Prime Minister's residence, decided to revoke the decision. Speaking to reporters here, Government spokesperson and Information Minister Shankar Pokhrel said, the cabinet has decided to revoke the decision to give the MRP printing contract to India. The meeting also decided to instruct the Foreign Ministry, which has signed an understanding with Security Printing and Minting Corporation (SPMC) of India on the MRP deal, to ask the Indian corporation to halt the printing process. The Cabinet has instructed the Foreign Ministry to begin a fresh process of awarding MRPs printing contract through a global tender. Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sujata Koirala has expressed her dissatisfaction of the decision not to print the passports in India Earlier, Unified CPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' derides the government, saying that it awarded the contract for printing MRPs to India by giving little regard to both the national security and the interest of the country. He also lambasted the government for awarding the printing contract by going against all rules and regulations and deliberately refusing the Public Accounts Committee's direction to halt the bidding process, Nepalnews reported.