The ordinance related to the railway issued by the government to bring the Jayanagar-Janakpur railway in operation has become inactive.
Now, there is a legal hurdle to fixing the date of the official inauguration of the railway.
The dry run (passenger less) train from Jayanagar to Janakpur has been operating once a day since last February 13. Following the success of the dry run, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi were scheduled for a joint inauguration in the second half of this month, said Niranjan Jha, General Manager, Nepal Railway Company.
Law is needed to operate the railway services. Jha informed that it was not possible to operate the train with passengers immediately as the required law (ordinance) has become inactive. He said that the date of inauguration will be fixed if there is a provision of law again.
He said that everything was technically fine to operate the railway service but if the train was operated due to lack of law, many problems could arise if there occurred any accident.
There is a legal provision that the ordinance must be submitted to the House within 60 days of the sitting of the Federal House. However, the Railway Ordinance-2078 was automatically deactivated due to non-submission within this period.
He said that there is a risk of operating the train with passengers without immediate law.
Alternatively, an ordinance can be issued again in case the House is not functioning or the ministry can operate the railway by formulating working procedures for a short period, he said, adding that initiatives are being taken for this.
Minister for Physical Infrastructure and Transport Renukumari Yadav submitted the ordinance on November 30, last year, saying that failure to operate the train immediately would cause problems in the locomotives and further damage to the railway structure.
Since there was no session of the Federal Parliament at that time and it was necessary to make laws related to railways, an ordinance was issued in December 2021 to make provision for railways following Article 114 (1) of the Constitution of Nepal.
Source : TRN,
