Janardan Sharma to be re-appointed as Finance Minister

Former minister Janardan Sharma will be re-appointed to his previous post as the Finance Minister on Sunday.

"Oath ceremony has been fixed for this evening," Ramesh Malla, Secretary of Maoist Center chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal confirmed to ANI over the phone.

Notably, Sharma resigned from his post this month after the parliament formed a probe committee to investigate allegations of tax tweaking on the incumbent fiscal year's annual budget.

Pressure mounted over Janardan Sharma since June 13 after a report in the local newspaper (Annapurna Daily) where two outsiders were brought to change some taxes just before the presentation of the budget in parliament on May 29.

The House of Representatives, this month, formed an 11-member inquiry committee to probe Sharma. Speaker Agni Prasad Sapkota proposed the names of 11 members of the parliamentary inquiry committee received from the political parties.

The probe committee includes four lawmakers including Khagaraj Adhikari, Pradip Gyawali, Bhanubhakta Dhakal and Bimala BK, as members of the main opposition CPN-UML. Likewise, the committee will have Pushpa Bhusal and Sitaram Mahato from the Nepali Congress, Dev Prasad Gurung and Shakti Bahadur Basnet from the Maoist Center.

Sarala Kumari Yadav of Unified Socialist, Surendra Yadav of Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP), and Laxman Lal Karna of Loktantrik Samajbadi Party are also included in the committee.

The vernacular daily reported that Sharma had instructed four senior Finance Ministry officials to follow the suggestions of two individuals one named Raghunath Ghimire, a retired senior non-gazetted officer and an unnamed chartered accountant--on the night of May 28.

The report stated that Sharma ordered to make some last moment changes in taxation which are claimed to be made with a view to benefiting some business groups and harming others.

Ghimire who joined the government service as a secretary of a village development committee in Nuwakot in May 1996 was transferred to a tax office in Kathmandu just after eight months of serving as secretary.

After serving in several revenue-related offices, he resigned on February 13, 2019, as a senior non-gazetted officer at the Department of Customs.

Responding to the allegations that surfaced then Finance Minister Sharma on 14 June's parliamentary meeting denied the involvement of unofficial personnel during budget preparation. But, still, he has to resign from the post on July 6.

However, the committee on Friday had given clean cheat to Sharma after it failed to establish and prove the allegations.