Kathmandu: Nepal’s ruling alliance has agreed to table the US-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Nepal Compact in the House of Representatives.
Minister for Communications and Information Technology Gyanendra Bahadur Karki said that the consensus has been forged among ruling parties to table the Compact at the Parliament on Sunday. “We will hold a rigorous discussion about the Compact in the Parliament,” he told reporters after a meeting of the alliance held today.
On Saturday, CPN (Unified Socialist), a party in the ruling alliance, had decided to allow tabling of the Compact in the House of Representatives. Though the faction led by leader Jhalanath Khanal, a communist hardliner, is still not happy with the decision, the CPN (Unified Socialist) Chairperson and the majority of leaders are believed to take a moderate stand on the MCC. The party has decided to accept the MCC grant as development assistance, according to Minister for Urban Development Ram Kumari Jhakri, who is also a leader of CPN (Unified Socialist).
There has long been a demand to allow the parliamentarians to discuss the project under the MCC grant on the basis of facts and logic.
Nepali Congress, the grand old democratic party, had long been in favor of tabling and ratifying the Compact. But there were confusions among other coalition partners including CPN (Maoist Center), CPN (Unified Socialist), Rastriya Janamorcha Party, and Janata Samajwadi Party.
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