Such visits in the month of June are more of a way to clear the government budget than to be useful
The development which is done in haste to complete the budget at the last moment without doing anything throughout the year is infamous by the name of 'Asare development'. In order to get a glimpse of this, the members of the Sudurpaschim Provincial Assembly have gone on an 'asare ghumfir'.
They have set out on a tour by allocating the budget under the title of study tour. According to the State Assembly Secretariat, up to seven lakhs are being allocated annually to each committee under the title of study tour.
Members of the Social Development Committee led by MP Dharmaraj Pathak are visiting Kathmandu. Economic Development and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Ghanshyam Chaudhary and other members have reached Rara in Karnali. Officials of Legislation and Provincial Affairs Committee have recently returned from a tour of Chisapani and Tikapur in Kailali.
Public Accounts Committee Chairman Akkal Bahadur Rawal along with some members went to Nainital in India last week in the name of a similar visit.
There are five thematic committees in the Sudurpaschim Provincial Assembly. Apart from the special committee that was formed this year, officials of other committees used to choose various places at government expense in the name of study tour in the past.
Social Development Committee Chairman Pathak has met and exchanged learning with three thematic committee officials of the House of Representatives, the Speaker, and the Speaker of the National Assembly. "We have arranged a meeting with the President and the Prime Minister as well," he said. Along with him, members Om Vikram Bhat, Kailash Chaudhary, Khushiram Dagaura Tharu, Jankidevi Kunwar, Jhapta Bahadur Saud, Tulsi Devkota, Maya Pant and Shivraj Bhatt and four employees of the state assembly are participating in the visit. Chairman Pathak said that earlier he was busy with budget preparation and now he had leisure time so he went out for study observation. It's been two months since I became the chairman, I don't care about what committees are doing in the past and now and where they are traveling. This is the right time for our committee, so we are visiting for good results.'
Economic Development and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Ghanshyam Chaudhary and members Khagraj Bhatt, Rajendra Singh Rawal, Chakra Bahadur Malla, Tara Prasad Joshi, Naresh Kumar Shahi, Lalita Sunar and Shivsingh Oli are visiting Karnali. On June 5, this group went on a study tour of parliamentary activities in Karnali province.
committee member Oli said that he had interacted with the officials of the Finance and Natural Resources Committee of the Karnali State Assembly and visited Rara via Calikot. "There is a plan to return to Dailekh on Monday after observing the place where fuel is being extracted," he said. "It is not wrong for MPs to go on study tours to follow good learning from different provinces, to adopt good practices from other places in their own provinces," he said. It would be better if the committees correct the schedule of the next year's visit.
Similarly, some officials including Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee Rawal are in controversy over their visit to Nainital in India to visit Lumbini. After the dispute, they said that their visit to Nainital was a personal expense visit and not a government visit, said a source in the state assembly secretariat. According to the Secretariat of the State Assembly, there is a rule that MPs will get 2,500 per day allowance for travel expenses, excluding transportation. "The employees of the state assembly who are in the tour team reduce their food and accommodation expenses from the same daily allowance amount that the parliamentarians get," said an employee of the secretariat.
