The Supreme Court agreed to register a writ of contempt of court against the government only after the petitioners agreed not to include the prime minister as a defendant.

“Our writ petition was registered only after we agreed to remove the prime minister as its defendant on Monday,” said advocate Lokendra Oli, one of the two writ petitioners. “Actually we had made him a defendant citing both the constitutional and legal provisions but the people in the apex court administration claimed that the prime minister cannot be made defendant because in the previous writ [demanding free PCR tests] he was not made the defendant.”

According to Oli, since the prime minister heads the cabinet that decided to charge for PCR tests and treatment of the patients he must be held responsible.

“We don’t know why the SC officials refused our petition,” Oli told the Post. “If that was to be corrected, the justices could have done that during the hearing process.”

Supreme Court officials had a discussion with writ petitioners for hours on Monday before registering the petition. They told the petitioners that the petition would be meaningless if the prime minister was made defendant as the Supreme Court’s directive order was only for the health minister.

Devendra Dhakal, information officer of the Supreme Court, verified that the court officials told the writ petitioners about procedural issues to the writ petitions.

“I think the officials responsible for the writ registration section had informed them about the procedural issues,” said Dhakal.

Advocates Oli and Keshar Jung KC had applied to get their writ demanding action against Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Health Minister Bhanubhakta Dhakal in a contempt of court for not implementing its directions not to charge fees for PCR tests and treatment of the coronavirus patients registered. In the writ the petitioners had demanded maximum punishment— one year of jail term and Rs 10,000 — to both the prime minister and the health minister.

The petition is scheduled to be heard on Tuesday but it has been placed at the bottom of the list.

On October 1, the Supreme Court had issued the directive order to the government not to take fees for PCR tests, whose full text appeared on October 13. But less than a week after the full text of the Supreme Court, the Cabinet decided to take charges both on PCR tests and treatments.