Valley
MoHA defies apex court order with politics in play
A Supreme Court (SC) ruling on promotion of four senior police officials has been grossly ignored by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), which oversees the law enforcement agencyManish Gautam
A Supreme Court (SC) ruling on promotion of four senior police officials has been grossly ignored by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), which oversees the law enforcement agency, largely due to, according to government sources, political interference.
On September 24, 2014, the SC had directed the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers (OPMCM), MoHA and Nepal Police Headquarters to promote four deputy inspectors general (DIG) to the post of additional inspector general.
But even after more than a year, MoHA is yet to comply with the apex court directive, which had come in response to a writ petition filed by DIGs Yadav Adhikari, Sushil Bar Singh Thapa, Parsuram Khatri and Bishwo Raj Shahi.
Though the SC order was challenged by the government, on December 18, 2015, Chief Justice Kalyan Shrestha had upheld the apex court’s earlier decision and quashed the government’s review petition. Since then the Judgement Execution Directorate (JEC) of the SC has written twice to comply with the order, but MoHA and other concerned bodies are yet to pay heed.
MoHA sources told the Post that the delay has been caused by “political meddling”.
UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has shown special interest in the promotion of police officials, said the government sources. Dahal, during his one of the meetings with the police officials, had even assured the four DIGs that “they would be promoted”, according to the sources.
“He had called the Home Minister (Shakti Basnet) in our presence and asked him not to delay the promotion,” said one of the DIGs present in the meeting.
But Dahal later is learnt to have instructed Home Minister Shakti Basnet, a leader from Dahal’s party, not to act on DIG promotion issue.
Minister Basnet, however, denied the allegations and insisted that he “works independently” and that there was no pressure from his party, or the party chairman for that matter.
Basnet said that the promotion is in the process of being implemented.
“They will be promoted soon,” said Basnet. He declined to say more on the issue.
All the four DIGs awaiting promotion, whom the Post contacted, said they could not say for sure why their promotion had been stalled. But they did suspect political interference for the delay.
The delay in promotion shows the complex relationship politicians and police officials share.
When the Promotion Committee, chaired by home secretary, recommended seven names for the post of AIG on June 27, 2014, it had already been seven months since the vacancy was announced. Why it took such a long time is something difficult to fathom for many, but those who know the “complex relationship” between police officials and politicians say “politics comes into play when big decisions, including promotion of senior officials, have to be taken in the law enforcement agency”.
The then home minister Bam Dev Gautam had even created two additional AIG posts “to accommodate officials close to him and his party CPN-UML”.
Mahendra Upadhyay, director general of the JEC, said that defying court order by the concerned government agencies could set a bad precedent. “The government should set example by complying with SC order,” said Upadhyay.
The defiance of court order by the government is also against the constitutional provision that states “all shall abide by the orders or decisions made in the course of trial of lawsuits by the courts.”