- “There is a question as to why a provision that should have been in the Electricity Bill has appeared in the Water Resources Bill. Another bill discusses engineering safety, but there is technical ambiguity, which raises serious concerns about potential misuse.” – Mahesh Bartuala, Chief Whip, CPN-UML

- “The bill states that if the concerned company builds a substandard dam, it may collapse later, and the responsibility for its safety should lie with the company, not the state. However, officials at the bureaucratic level misinterpreted this and conveyed it incorrectly to the Prime Minister.” – Deepak Bahadur Singh, Chairperson, Infrastructure Development Committee.

The government has backed away from its decision to withdraw the Water Resources Bill. Although it was informed that the Cabinet meeting on June 16 had decided to withdraw the bill, the decision was never formally made public.

The bill will not be withdrawn after Congress leaders and officials from the parliamentary committee exerted pressure, stating that the Prime Minister had misunderstood the issue.

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli had stated that the bill had to be withdrawn because it needed to be amended to include provisions related to dam safety, which were not part of the bill presented to Parliament but were included in the report prepared by the Infrastructure Committee of the House of Representatives.

The committee has included in Clause 30 the provisions that ‘the primary duty and responsibility to ensure the safety of the dam for its construction and operation shall lie with the dam operator’ and that ‘the dam operator must comply with the construction, operation, and safety standards prepared by the commission.’ Due to these provisions, Prime Minister Oli was concerned that foreign military forces could be allowed to intervene in the security of projects built by foreigners.

Immediately after the Cabinet decision on June 16, Congress leaders met Prime Minister Oli and drew his attention to the matter. “It was said that the bill was withdrawn after the Prime Minister raised objections regarding the provisions related to project security. After long discussions, when the bill was finally being taken to Parliament and had already passed one house and moved to the other, we did not agree with the sudden decision to withdraw it,” said a Congress official. “When we conveyed this to the Prime Minister, he agreed not to withdraw it.”

According to Deepak Bahadur Singh, Chairperson of the Infrastructure Development Committee, Energy Minister Deepak Khadka along with other committee officials had clearly expressed the Prime Minister’s concerns. “So far, neither the committee nor the Speaker has received any notification regarding the withdrawal of the bill,” Singh said. There is a legal provision that the concerned ministry must inform the Parliamentary Secretariat when the Cabinet decides to withdraw a bill.

The Water Resources Bill, which was registered in Parliament by then Energy Minister Shakti Basnet on June 13 last year, was sent to the Infrastructure Development Committee on July 9 for clause-by-clause discussion. According to Committee Chairperson Singh, during the clause-by-clause discussion of the bill, MP Gagan Thapa had proposed the inclusion of provisions regarding dam safety. Later, as the committee members also recognized the necessity, related provisions were included in Chapter 9.

According to Singh, initially Prime Minister Oli’s understanding was the same as that of the committee and the members of parliament. However, he said that the Prime Minister was ‘briefed’ with a misinterpretation by the bureaucratic level. “The law secretary had said, ‘Proceed with the bill as proposed; it is not for you to add or subtract anything.’ I told him that this is a matter of parliamentary authority, not his to decide, and I got a bit heated.”

“For this reason, the Secretary of the Ministry of Law did not attend one of the committee meetings,” said Committee Chairperson Singh. “Instead, the Undersecretary was sent. After the bill was amended, the matter reached the Prime Minister.”

Infrastructure Development Committee Chairperson Singh stated that the provision made in Clause 30 is not related to armed security. “If the concerned company does not build a quality dam, it may collapse or get damaged later. Therefore, the bill stipulates that the responsibility for its safety lies with the company, not the state,” he said.

The committee passed the report and submitted it to Parliament on march 31, and on April 18, the House of Representatives passed the bill along with the report. After the bill was tabled in the National Assembly, the Prime Minister Oli tried to stop it upon receiving information from the bureaucratic level regarding the provisions related to dam safety. Udayaraj Sapkota, who retired from the Ministry of Law just two weeks ago, said that they only deal with procedural matters and that there was nothing related to dams in their scope, declining to provide further details.

CPN-UML Chief Whip Mahesh Bartuala claimed that although concerns were raised regarding dams, the government did not decide to withdraw the bill. He said there were some technical ambiguities in the provisions related to dam safety included in the bill.

“First, there is the question of why a provision that should have been included in the Electricity Bill has come in the Water Resources Bill. Second, the bill talks about engineering safety, not armed security, but there is technical ambiguity in the bill, which raises serious concerns about possible misuse,” he said. “Since the bill has already been presented in the National Assembly, it is a matter of their authority what they do with it. But the current provisions create confusion. It is necessary to clarify this.”

Source: Kantipur