January 10: Although the government has dissolved the House of Representatives, more than Rs 6 billion is to be spent at the discretion of lawmakers of the dissolved house.

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli had dissolved the lower house due to internal rift within the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP). But preparations are underway to utilize the budget of Rs 6.6 billion allocated for the Local Infrastructure Development Programme under which the amount is to be spent by the lawmakers at their discretion.

According to the Ministry of Finance, although there are no lawmakers at the House of Representatives at the moment, the programme will go ahead as it has already been included in the annual budget.

Officials at the ministry say that the government has to take a new decision to halt the programmes included in the budget. They argue that the budget has already been endorsed by the parliament and therefore the Council of Ministers need to issue a new order to halt its progress.

The government had issued a work procedure and regulations to implement the programme after the festival of Dashain. In previous years, lawmakers were free to decide whether to spend the budget in road, infrastructure, drinking water, schools or other projects. However, this year, the government had amended the regulation that included a provision for the lawmakers to select the projects on the basis of priority. As per the work procedure, lawmakers had selected the health sector as first priority.

“The projects have been selected last month and most of the lawmakers choose health sector as per the new regulation,” said joint secretary Dilli Ram Panthi.

He says that the finance ministry is ready to release budget for those programmes.