Also, Last cabinet meeting took three dozen important decisions It has been revealed that the final cabinet meeting of the Pushpa Kamal Dahal government made a lot more important decisions than those told to journalists by government spokesperson Krishna Bahadur Mahara after the meeting on Monday. The government made about three dozen important decisions including releasing funds running into almost half a billion to its own party, withdrawing cases on criminal offences, making high level appointments and posting a large number of civil servants a few hours before Prime Minister Dahal announced his resignation Monday afternoon. The cabinet decided to convert about Rs 0.48 billion-that had remained from the funds released by the previous government for the up-keeping of the Maoist cadres-as a subsidy to its own party the Unified CPN (Maoist). Likewise, it decided to distribute Rs 1.5 million to various people from the Prime Minister’s relief fund. Finance minister Baburam Bhattarai had already released the fund for the latter even before the cabinet decision as per the instructions from the PM Dahal. Likewise, ten cases of criminal offence were withdrawn as per the recommendation of law minister Dev Gurung. The government also appointed Karma Sengbo Sherpa as vice-chairman and Rajendra Thapa Magar as member secretary of Lumbini Development Fund. Vice-chairman and member secretary of LDF hold the rankings of state minister and assistant minister respectively. In addition to the high-level appointments, the cabinet also decided on the posting of more than 800 civil servants. The government spokesperson had only informed journalists of the appointment in Armed Police Force, Nepal Investigation Department (NID) and Nepal Telecom. nepalnews.com May 06 09

commando · May 5, 2009 11:33 PM