The parliamentary International Relations and Tourism Committee has decided to remind the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers to table the civil aviation bills in the lower house of the federal parliament after its earlier order was ignored.

On December 28 last year, the committee directed the prime minister's office to table the bills in Parliament at the earliest. It had also asked the Tourism Ministry to update it on the status of the bills.

“Our (the committee) orders appear to have been ignored,” said Raj Kishore Yadav, chairman of the committee.

“We have decided to remind the prime minister's office again.”

According to Yadav, the prime minister's office is ‘intentionally’ withholding the bills. “There could be a larger politics behind it.”

The two long-pending aviation bills—the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal Bill, and the Air Service Authority of Nepal Bill—envisage splitting up Nepal’s aviation body into two entities—service provider and regulator, a condition for Nepal to be struck off the European Union’s air safety list.

A tourism ministry official told the Post that they have written to the parliamentary committee regarding the status of the bills. “We have written that the bills were submitted to the prime minister's office months ago seeking approval to table them in Parliament.”

On July 16, 2023, two months before the European Union Aviation Safety Agency planned a safety audit of Nepal’s aviation system, the tourism ministry sent the draft bills to the Cabinet, seeking its ‘approval in principle’ for tabling it in Parliament.

Passing the civil aviation bills would ensure an independent regulator and pull Nepal out of the air safety list, which has caused immense damage to Nepal’s tourism and earned the country the reputation of having a terrible aviation safety record.

The draft bills, already passed by the upper house and shelved by the lower house following a change in government, were abruptly put on hold by the Pushpa Kamal Dahal administration, insiders say.

The 15th Joint Commission meeting of the European Union held in Kathmandu on March 19 also underlined that air safety remains a key priority area in their bilateral relations.

The visiting Paola Pampaloni, deputy managing director for Asia and the Pacific at the European External Action Service of the European Union, told the Nepali media that 'air safety is a fundamental’ issue.

“Passengers should be protected. Nepal is a country where more air accidents are happening,” she said. “So, our technical team has taken air safety very seriously.”

She added, "Whether they are the EU or the Nepali people, our priority is the safety of the people.”

Multiple sources the Post talked to say that the bill’s passage was stopped by Pradip Adhikari, director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal after he assured the prime minister and other political leaders that the European Commission (EC), part of the European Union executive, would lift the ban this time.

On November 30 last year, the EC decided to continue its ban on Nepali airlines through an updated “EU Air Safety List,” the list of non-European airlines that do not meet international safety standards and are therefore subject to an operating ban or operational restrictions within the European Union.

Following the continuation of the ban, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, which currently performs a dual role—service provider and regulator—blamed Nepal Airlines that its poor safety management had led to Nepal being in the EC’s bad books.

For a long time—over 15 years—global aviation watchdogs have questioned the civil aviation body’s dual role and urged Nepal to split up the organisation into two entities to enhance the safety of flyers.

However, the government has shown no interest in doing so, and Nepal's aviation industry is suffering as a result.

On August 2, 2021, the upper house unanimously passed the two aviation bills which had been languishing for a year and a half as political squabbling engulfed the country. They were registered on February 23, 2020.

The bills then went to the Parliament Secretariat which included them on the agenda of a meeting of the lower house scheduled for March 2, 2022.

But on the day the bills were supposed to be discussed, the then tourism minister Prem Bahadur Ale asked the Parliament Secretariat to hold them back, explaining that some employees of the aviation regulator were opposed to the planned fragmentation of their organisation.

Two weeks later, on March 15, then President Bidya Bhandari prorogued the federal parliament. As a result, the bills went into deep storage.

The bills were returned to the Ministry of Civil Aviation when the second federal parliament was elected by the general elections in November 2022.

The immediate past tourism minister Sudan Kiranti had taken the initiative to register the bills in Parliament after his predecessors—Ale and Jeevan Ram Shrestha—showed no interest in getting them passed.

On July 16, 2023, the bills were again submitted to the prime minister’s office and have since remained there.

Every successive tourism minister and political leaders have been constantly pledging to the diplomatic community that Nepal will pass the bills and start the process to have it removed from the bad books of the European Commission.

In December 2013, the European Commission imposed a blanket ban on Nepali airlines from flying into the 28-nation bloc after the September 2012 crash of Sita Air Flight 601 on the bank of the Manohara River near the Kathmandu airport minutes after take-off. Nineteen people, including seven British citizens, died.

The commission became more concerned after that fatal crash, and it prevented airlines from Nepal from entering the continent as the country reported a spate of air accidents over the years. Between 2008 and 2012, Nepal saw at least two air crashes every year.

The European Union, since then, has been watching Nepal’s air safety development process closely.