Nepal Highlights

A meeting of the 28 political parties in the Constituent Assembly (CA) Monday morning has agreed to include provision to give national party status to all political parties participating in the general convention. The parties agreed to scrap the present system to recognise only parties securing three percent votes in the general election as national parties in order to ensure the rights of minority and marginalised groups to open the parties. At the meeting, all parties but the Unified CPN (Maoist) agreed not to change the shape, colour and symbols of the national flag. Maoist vice chairman Narayan Kaji Shrestha informed reporters after the meeting that all other parties except the UCPN (Maoist) had agreed to retain the shape and colour of the national flag. However, the parties had different opinions on interpreting the national flag, according to Shrestha.

India is reportedly all set to resume supplies of lethal weapons to Nepal which it had stalled since the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) started monitoring of arms and armed personnel of Nepal Army (NA) and the Maoist People's Liberation Army. An online edition of leading Indian newspaper, Indian Express, reported that the Indian moves comes as per the request made by Nepal government to New Delhi "for urgent nominal lethal weapons supplies" as the NA was running out of assault rifle, ammunition, training artillery ammunition, among others. The paper quoted government sources as saying that the request was communicated to the highest levels and a decision has been taken to accede to this nominal demand. The report about the possible resumption of arms and ammunition supplies comes ahead of Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao's scheduled three-day visit to Nepal starting Jan.18 to take up bilateral issues with Kathmandu and assess the country's ongoin

Govt to print SLC question papers in Nepal The government has decided to print the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) question papers in Nepal instead of India from now on. A cabinet meeting held at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, Singha Durbar Monday took a decision to this effect. The decision comes after the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Legislature-Parliament directed Ministry of Education (MoE) to print the SLC question papers in Nepal The parliamentary committee had also suggested using the Janak Education Material Centre (JEMC) owned printing press for printing SLC question papers and seek other private alternatives if JEMC alone is not sufficient. Though JEMC has its own state-of-the-art security press, the government has been printing SLC question papers in India citing security reasons -- rampant leakage of questions papers. Similarly, the meeting also gave a go-ahead to the grant aid of Rs 504 million for the Sustainable Land Management