Nepal Highlights

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the legislative-parliament has directed the government not to print the Machine-Readable Passports (MRP)s in India for security reasons. PAC issued such directive after seeking information from foreign minister Sujata Koirala and foreign ministry officials on MRP printing. PAC had summoned the minister and the officials after reports that minister Koirala is in mood to award the contract of printing the MRPs to Indian company Indian security printers through a cabinet decision became public. The cabinet is meeting Thursday afternoon.  The PAC has directed the ministry to award the contract to one of the four companies which had applied to it earlier. The ministry had cancelled the tender citing technical reasons few months ago.

The Annual General Meeting of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) has begun in Nepalgunj, Thursday. President Ram Baran Yadav inaugurated the AGM amid a function in Nepalgunj this morning. Journalists had taken out a morning rally before this. FNJ general secretary has presented a organisational report of the federation this afternoon. The close-door-session of the federation is beginning later today.

Police raided various Guest Houses in Banepa and arrested 26 persons while having sex or in sex-oriented positions, reports say. Five couples were arrested from Chandika, Chandeshwari, Valley and Welcome Guest House of Banepa while having sex. Likewise, seven girls were arrested from Shiva Guest House, Dhaneshwar and three boys and six girls were arrested from Phoolbari Restaurent. The arrested are in the age group of 18 to 26. Police have said, they raided them after locals complained of sexual activities in public. However, it is illegal to arrest anyone having sex in mutual consent. Police in the recent weeks have been interfering in people's private life in the name of curbing indecent activities, too. Prostitution is illegal in Nepal. However, there were reports police even arrested mutual romantic partners from some hotels in Kathmandu recently. Likewise, in a worse case, few weeks ago, even married couples were arrested from some hotels in Pokhara.

The Unified CPN (Maoist) has deferred the expansion of its Central Committee after it could not sort out the selection of new CC members. A meeting of the incumbent central committee of the party held Thursday morning decided not to expand the central committee for now. The same central committee had decided to expand the Maoist central committee to 175-members last week. The present committee is 137-membered. Maoist leaders dwelt on selecting 37 members for the CC expansion for almost two weeks. Various Rajya Samitis of the party forwarded names of more than 200 candidates for the CC. Even a task force formed led by party general secretary Ram Bahadur Thapa took a long time to prepare its report. It had somehow prepared a list of more than 200 persons to be included in the CC. Top leaders had agreed in principal to further expand the CC to about 250 members after it could not shortlist the recommendations. However, in today's CC meeting the party suddenly decided it will no