KATHMANDU: Unified Socialist Party lawmaker Rajendra Pandey has publicly named three government officials whom he claims were directly responsible for the controversial removal of the cooling-off period provision from the Federal Civil Service Bill.
Pandey, who is also a member of the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee, made the allegation during deliberations over the report submitted by the parliamentary special investigation committee, which recently concluded that a serious error had occurred in the drafting process of the bill.
According to Pandey, Suraj Kumar Dura, Secretary of the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee; Meera Acharya, Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration; and Subash Kumar Bhattarai, Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Law, played a central role in omitting the provision that would have barred civil servants from holding high-level appointments for two years after resignation or retirement.
“This wasn’t an accident,” Pandey said, pointing out that the deletion of the clause, originally intended to promote ethical governance, was not debated properly in committee meetings. He accused the three officials of bypassing due process and misleading committee members during the finalization of the bill.
Pandey further revealed that the final draft passed by the House on June 29 included a restructuring of subsection (5) of Clause 82 that effectively neutralized the cooling-off requirement. He said the changes were neither discussed in full nor circulated among committee members before being signed and tabled in Parliament.
“This wasn’t just an oversight. The secretary [Suraj Kumar Dura] told us that subsection (5) was never discussed, then how did it make it into the final version?” Pandey questioned, calling it a breach of parliamentary procedure.
The allegations come amid widespread criticism over growing political-bureaucratic collusion and manipulation of laws to accommodate partisan interests. The special investigation committee’s report has already pointed to direct or indirect political influence in the controversial amendment.
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