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Affairs, Sujata Koirala, who has been opposing the decision to award the
printing contract of Machine Readable Passports (MRP) to a French company, has
said she would not approve the MRP design at any cost.
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| Deputy PM Sujata Koirala (File photo) |
to sign the MRP contract because this is a matter of the security and
sovereignty of our country," she told media persons after the cabinet meeting
Friday evening. She had also told the same thing during the cabinet
meeting.
Koirala insisted that the French firm, Oberthur Technologies,
lacks authenticity and reliability of service and claimed that the foreign
secretary has been putting undue pressure on her to sign the MRP
contract.
Out of the total four bidders, the French company had bagged
the MRP bid as it stated the lowest printing cost.
DPM Koirala, who has
been insisting on giving the MRP contract to India right from the beginning, is
opposed to the MRP decision of the ministry which was based on the report of its
evaluation team.
Earlier, the government was forced to withdraw its
decision to award the MRP contract to India following widespread pressure and
repeated orders by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) not to go ahead with the
deal as it might compromise national security, and it lacked transparency.
nepalnews.com