Last year, the proceedings of the House of Representatives were obstructed for several days following a protest by the CPN-UML, then main opposition party, demanding the formation of a high-level mechanism to investigate gold smuggling.

It was only after days-long obstructions that the ruling and the opposition parties agreed to constitute the probe panel. It seems history is repeating in under a year. The only difference now is the Nepali Congress has taken the place of the UML.

The Congress, the largest party in the lower house, which has been demanding a parliamentary committee to investigate fraud charges against Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs Rabi Lamichhane, has warned not to allow the House to function unless such a panel is formed.

Taking the floor during his designated special time in the House, Congress lawmaker Bishwa Prakash Sharma said their ultimatum for formation of the parliamentary committee has expired. “Come up with a decision to form a parliamentary investigation committee. This is our bottom line,” said Sharma, who also is a Congress general secretary. “We have closely followed how the House proceedings were obstructed in the past. Don’t take our patience as our weakness.”

The Congress has been demanding the formation of the probe panel ever since Lamichhane took charge of the home ministry last month. At the March 20 meeting, the party had said it would resort to House obstruction if the committee is not formed by the next meeting.

However, when the House meeting resumed Sunday, the party backtracked from the announcement to obstruct the House. It adopted a strategy of allowing proceedings while barring Lamichhane from taking the rostrum.

Three days later, the party issued another deadline for the formation of the parliamentary probe. The next meeting has been called for Sunday.

So far the ruling parties are in no mood to form such a panel. They say the Congress is adopting a double standard by demanding a probe and even resignation from Lamichhane. When the Congress was still in the government, it had objected to the UML’s calls to dismiss three ministers including Mohan Bahadur Basnet, then minister for health and population.

Basnet had been under investigation by the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority for his suspected involvement in corruption in the procurement of the Telecommunication Traffic Monitoring and Fraud Control System (Teramocs) for the Nepal Telecommunication Authority.

The Rastriya Swatantra Party lawmakers say there should be the same yardstick to seek accountability from politicians. Mentioning different scams involving leaders of other parties, mainly the Congress, the party’s leader Swarnim Wagle asked, “Are we ready for an all-party commitment that any lawmaker or a minister facing any allegations must resign immediately? If yes, the RSP will be the first to sign it.”

Wagle said that by not allowing Lamichhane, who also is his party chair, from defending himself in Parliament, the Congress was presenting an extreme example of intolerance and negation. “The home minister has said he will answer the allegations on the House floor. Let’s first listen to him,” he said.

Speaker Devraj Ghimire also has reminded Congress lawmakers that the minister should be allowed to put across his points in the House if he wants to. “It is the constitutional obligation of the prime minister and the ministers to be accountable to Parliament,” he said. “And it is our parliamentary practice, tradition, and system to allow the prime minister and ministers to make their views clear if they want to.”

The Congress, however, has said as it has already heard the home minister in public and in the media, and it now wants him to make his explanation before a parliamentary committee. “The home minister has called for a public debate. We are ready for such a debate in a parliamentary committee,” said Sharma.

He further said the probe panel is not just the demand of his party but of over 50,000 depositors from cooperatives whose over Rs800 million has been misappropriated.

Victims of cooperatives on February 5 had lodged a complaint at the District Police Office, Kaski against three people including Lamichhane. A probe committee launched by the Pokhara Metropolitan City found that over Rs1.35 billion in public deposits at the cooperative was embezzled.

Kantipur, the Post’s sister publication, ran a series of stories on Lamichhane’s involvement in the alleged misuse of cooperative deposits to buy shares of Gorkha Media Network, a media company.

Lamichhane, a former television host and managing director of a television channel co-founded by Gitendra Babu (GB) Rai, has been accused of embezzling hundreds of millions of rupees in collusion with Rai from different cooperatives in Kaski, Chitwan and Butwal.

Rai, who was the chairman of the Gorkha Media Network, the mother company of the channel, is accused of illegally transferring Rs300 million from Kaski-based Surya Darshan Cooperative, Rs110.71 million from Chitwan-based Sahara Cooperative, and Rs 100.74 million from Supreme Cooperative in Butwal, without providing any collateral.