Royals owe Rs 33m in electricity bills
BY BIKASH SANGRAULA
KATHMANDU, May 5 - The royal family owes Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) over Rs 33 million in unpaid electricity bills for the one-and-half-year period till January 2007. This makes the royals the country's biggest domestic defaulters in electricity bills.
The figure includes unpaid bills of nine residences of the royal family and royal relatives in the capital. All of them stopped paying their electricity bills altogether a few months after the royal takeover on Feb 1, 2005. The figure, however, does not include unpaid bills of royal residences outside Kathmandu Valley, such as Ratna Mandir in Pokhara and Diyalo bungalow in Bharatpur, that also stopped paying after King Gyanendra's bloodless coup.
According to a source at NEA, Narayanhiti palace tops the list of defaulters with more than Rs 24.3 million in arrears, while Nagarjun palace owes NEA Rs 2.4 million. Similarly, Nirmal Niwas has not paid over Rs 2.3 million, while Chaunni bungalow owes the state utility Rs 1.5 million.
The names of five royal relatives also appear in NEA's list of defaulters.
Among them are King Gyanendra's aunt Helen Shah with Rs 551,000 in unpaid electricity bills, the late Dhirendra Shah's daughter Pooja Rajya Laxmi Shah with Rs 505,000, Helen Shah's daughter Jyotsana Rajya Laxmi Devi Basnet with Rs 477,000, the late Prekshya Rajya Laxmi Shah with Rs 412,000, and Bharati Rajya Laxmi Singh with Rs 256,000.
According to the source, in the past, the royals used to pay the utility bills for their residences in Kathmandu and outside. However, they stopped paying at various points in time after the royal takeover. Since July 2005, none of them has paid any electricity bill. They have continued to default on payment even after the regime change last year.
"After the success of the April movement last year, we have been regularly sending the cumulative electricity bills to the palace as well as to the
royal relatives. None have responded, let alone pay," said the source.
"Considering their profile, we cannot take measures such as discontinuing power supply," he added. In fact, these residences did not have to face a minute of power cut even when the whole country went through up to 17 hours of load-shedding per week as recently as two months ago.
Posted on: 2007-05-04 23:11:07 (Server Time)
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