Efforts ongoing to ink SSP under separate heading: Lawmaker Gurung

By TRN Online, Kathmandu, July 21: Dev Prasad Gurung, a member of the House of Representatives (HoR) from the ruling CPN (Maoist Center), has cast doubt that the government is secretly preparing to ink the State Partnership Programme (SPP).

Lawmaker Gurung said so while speaking at the HoR meeting today.

Referring to the way Sewa Lamsal, joint secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, expressed the inability to write to the US about Nepal's Cabinet decision not to do the SPP, the lawmaker from the Maoist Center expressed his doubt that the government was trying to ink a pact similar to the SPP under a different heading.

Lawmaker Gurung viewed that it was deplorable on the part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to say that a written response against SPP could not be forwarded immediately and that the process could be initiated only after discussion and consultation with different sides.

He demanded that the Speaker should issue a ruling to the government to immediately communicate with the US in relation to the SPP as the expressions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were against the decision of the Council of Ministers.

The lawmaker highlighted that SPP could not be acceptable in any other excuse or form.