NTA selection process in limbo
KATHMANDU:
Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) may not get a new board member anytime soon. The process of appointing the new board member has been halted following the Supreme Court (SC)’s interim order.
Advocate Ratna Kumar Kharel last month had filed a case challenging the legality of Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) to call vacancy and appoint the new member specifying the field ‘market management’. After hearing on the case, SC recently has also decided to give continuity to its stay order issued three weeks ago.
“The selection process for the new member is discriminatory because the vacancy notice has clearly mentioned the working field,” said Kharel.
He said that the selection process has to be cancelled as the exact mentioning of the working field in the notice is against the provision of the Telecommunication Act 1997.
According to the Act, NTA shall consist of five members including the chairman, who are qualified and experienced, as prescribed in the technical and administrative, market management, accounts and auditing or legal field relating to the telecommunications service. Kharel argued that the law talks of diverse fields but it does not mean that board members should be from different sectors.
The post of the new member has remained vacant since January this year after the five-year tenure of Girindra Raj Adhikari, a board member of NTA expired. On May 20, MoIC had called a vacancy specifying the field ‘market management’ and published the notice for a second time after it received only three applications. A senior official at MoIC said that after the court’s stay order they have stopped all works related to the selection process.
In the last two years, most of the decisions related to NTA have been controversial. Be it appointment of board members, issuance of unified telecom licence or frequency fee collection, majority of issues related to NTA and also decisions made by it have attracted criticism. Even though Digambar Jha was appointed chairman, a case filed against his selection is also sub-judice at SC.
In 2012 too, a similar type of case was filed by Rajiv Rauniyar arguing that the selection procedure of NTA chairman and member was against legal provisions. Rauniyar was one of the applicants for the post of both chairman and member. However, the Supreme Court had scrapped the petitions and given a go-ahead after which MoIC had appointed Jha as the new chairman and Dhan Raj Gyawali as a member representing the legal field.
Kharel said that the court has also decided to issue a final verdict on his case after reviewing the detailed verdict of the writ filed by Rauniyar. The detailed verdict of the case scrapped in November 2012 is yet to come.
Currently, the NTA board that has a provision of five members including the chairman, has only three members. NTA officials said that the presence of only three members had affected the decision making process as members lack majority voting — if one of them takes leave and is out of Kathmandu Valley or the country.
Source: THT
