Nepal
Army on Thursday agreed to relinquish its land at ‘Putali Bagaicha’ and clear
the way for the government to construct a new parliament building on it.
This
decision follows the government’s move to provide Nepal Army land near the
Ministry of Home Affairs.
The new
building will comprise the House of Representatives (HoR) and the National
Assembly (NA).
According
to Speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara, the Secretariat is in the process of
acquiring 151 ropani of land for the parliament building. The Cabinet would
announce the decision regarding the land.
Prime
Minister KP Sharma Oli took the decision to construct parliament building,
besides four other decisions, on the first day of assuming the office of the
executive head of the country. He had announced to construct the new building
within two years.
Preparations
for the parliament building started in the last week of March by setting up a
committee led by Chief Secretary Lok Darshan Regmi. The panel includes General
Secretary of Legislature Parliament Manohar Prasad Bhattarai and secretaries of
related ministries including the Home and Urban Development ministries.
The
parliament building within at Singha Durbar housed bicameral parliament before
the election of first Constituent Assembly in 2008. Since then, the
International Convention Centre (ICC) at Baneshwor serves as the parliament
building. The government pays Rs 50 million annually as rentals to ICC. Plan to
construct a building for the parliament dates back to panchayat days. The plan
never took off.
After
restoration of democracy, parliament functioned from the building that housed
Rastriya Panchayat. The old parliament building known as Gallery Baithak was
the personal theatre of Prime Minister Chandra Shumsher Rana. The plan to
construct a new parliament building at Putali Bagaicha is not recent. Singha
Durbar Secretariat Reconstruction Committee had submitted the proposal in 2001
with complete design and estimated cost of Rs 2.15 billion to the then
government.
The
committee hadproposed a dome shaped parliament complex having six blocks—House
of Representatives, National Assembly, libraries, offices of the various
parties, offices of the secretariat, and other sections.
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