Writ filed against deletion of CCTV footage at Finance Ministry

KATHMANDU: A writ petition has been filed by Advocate Saroj K Ghimire and Baburam Aryal against the Office of the Prime Minister, Ministry of Finance and Janardan Sharma Prabhakar and others in the matters of deletion of CCTV footage.

“During the preparation of the budget at the Ministry of Finance, the then Finance Minister Janardan Sharma allowed unauthorized access of a certain person to a highly secret room used for budget preparation and thus violated the secrecy of the state, caused revenue losses and kept the state’s revenue at jeopardy,” the writ reads.

The former Minister is alleged to have allowed someone to pop in and play with the tax slab to benefit business houses.

The CCTV footage is said to have been deleted from the system, and thus petitioners have claimed the protection and restoration of the CCTV, in case it was deleted.

Petitioners contended that it is the prime responsibility of the Finance Minister to prevent any kinds of fiscal theft and he failed to do so rather he facilitated it.

Petitioner Advocate Saroj K Ghimire said that such an act is equal to fiscal treason as such confidential work should be protected from unauthorized/external access until the budget day and the intelligence agencies should have kept tabs on the movements of finance ministry officials and anyone who had potential access to budget preparation.

The Finance Minister and the officials instead of keeping budget preparation work in “fiscal quarantine” until the presentation of the budget, opened the door for others to peep in and play with the budget.

The petitioners have claimed that until the ‘fiscal quarantine’ period, all the entry and exit points of the ministry should have been guarded by security personnel and close watch had to be on the movements of those entering the rooms of officials involved in the Budget-making process.

But something unacceptable was done as claimed by the petitioners.

Petitioners have thus sought adequate laws to protect data, including CCTV footage, protection of digital records and meaningful investigation into the incident for maintaining privacy at the highest level when it comes to budget.