Kathmandu: Former Finance Minister Janardan Sharma on Thursday denied the involvement of unauthorized persons in the budget formulation.
Making a statement before a parliamentary committee formed to investigate allegations of budget manipulation by him, Sharma claimed that he was in the ministry till midnight on May 28, the day before the budget was tabled in Parliament, and only the two secretaries of the ministry, the head of the budget division, and other budget-related staff were present.
Sharma said that he is aware that budget formulation is a sensitive issue claiming that accusations of manipulating the budget involving outsiders to alter tax rates in the budget were baseless.
He claimed that the tax rates were altered based on policy and advice received within the ministry. He, however, said that he had consulted with experts before formulating the budget. Sharma argued that he was not aware of the basis on which the media wrote the news of involving outsiders.
He said he was not aware that the ministry’s CCTV footage had been deleted, arguing that a minister does not have information about the CCTV footage inside a ministry.
A meeting of the committee held on Tuesday had decided to summon Minister Sharma to record his statement and send a hard disk from the Finance Ministry to the forensic lab to Nepal Police for data recovery.
Sharma had tendered his resignation on July 16 after a parliamentary committee was formed to investigate accusations against him of manipulating the budget involving outsiders to alter tax rates in the budget speech just before it was presented before the Parliament. Minister Sharma, however, has been denying any wrongdoings.
After the news of budget manipulation came out, parliamentarians, especially the leaders from the opposition CPN-UML, demanded CCTV footage of the ministry premises in the parliament. Sharma had refused to cooperate to provide the footage.
Despite the legal provisions to maintain the archive for at least three months, Sharma, on July 3, said the CCTV footage has been deleted citing that the CCTV has the capacity to store footage for only 13 days.
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