PACT statement on Gagan Thapa’s agrobusiness flawed

Sujit Mainali / November 22, 2017

Nepali Congress leader Gagan Thapa                                                                                                                    Photo: Youtube

Nepali Congress leader Gagan Thapa was accused of misappropriating funds released by the Project for Agriculture Commercialization and Trade (PACT) to Thapa-owned Sunkhani Ekikrit Krishi Kendra. PACT is a project run by the Ministry of Agricultural Development. Thapa’s accusers say that the money was meant for processing and marketing of meat products.

Meanwhile, PACT issued a public statement on November 20 and said that the charge leveled against Thapa is baseless. The statement further says that PACT did not make any payment to Sunkhani Ekikrit Krishi Kendra (SEKK), whose chairman was Thapa.

According to the PACT statement, an agreement had been reached between PACT and SEKK to run a sub-project, however on December 14, 2015, SEKK wrote to the PACT requesting for annulment of the agreement. The statement has said that SEKK made the request to avoid conflict of interest after Thapa’s election as the chairman of the parliamentary committee. PACT also came under the purview of the Thapa-headed committee.

South Asia Check has examined whether the following two claims made in the PACT statement are fact-based or not:

First Claim: Sub-project was annulled immediately after March 2, 2016.

Second Claim: Sub-project was annulled to avoid conflict of interest after Thapa’s election as the chairman of the parliamentary committee.

First Claim: Sub-project was annulled immediately after March 2, 2016.

According to the website of PACT, the sub-project was annulled on July 24, 2017.

Therefore, PACT statement’s claim contradicts the information on its website.

Second Claim: Sub-project was annulled to avoid conflict of interest after Thapa’s election as the chairman of the parliamentary committee.

PACT and SEKK had reached an agreement to run the sub-project on August 25, 2014, according to PACT website.

On the third day of the agreement, Thapa was elected as chairman of the parliament’s Water Resources Committee.

According to the PACT statement, Thapa had written to PACT only on December 14, 2015 (around 16 months after his election as chairman of the parliamentary committee) along with a request to annul the aforementioned agreement. But the agreement was annulled on July 24, 2017, one year and seven months* after the request. When the agreement was annulled, it had been eleven months since Thapa’s dissociation from the parliamentary committee.

Therefore, it is not appropriate to claim that the sub-project was annulled to avoid conflict of interest after Thapa’s election as the chairman of the parliamentary committee, under whose purview PACT fell.

* Earlier we had mistakenly stated seven months.

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