NTA Chair Bhandari Under Fire for Hiding Approved Budget and Promoting Secrecy

Kathmandu: The Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has withheld the approved budget and program for the current fiscal year 2082/83, instead of making it public. The budget, endorsed by the Board of Directors after obtaining the opinion of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, was reportedly kept confidential at the direction of Chairman Bhupendra Bhandari.

Although limited and incomplete information has been included in the quarterly updates published under the provisions of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the full approved annual budget remains undisclosed. Unlike the NTA, most government bodies, including the federal government, make their annual budget and programs public for the information of stakeholders and the general public.

While the government’s budget is presented in Parliament and passed after discussions, other regulatory agencies, such as the Securities Board of Nepal, publish their budgets and programs on their official websites. In contrast, the NTA has only shared partial program details internally, distributing them by division or branch to citizens and even to its own employees.

A body expected to uphold openness in the technology sector, the Authority has instead been promoting secrecy and opacity in recent years. Employees say that Chairman Bhandari personally monitors any critical news about the Authority, tracking CCTV footage and interrogating staff about who they met, even checking the guard’s register.

The concealment of information reached such a level that former Minister of Communications and Information Technology Prithvi Subba Gurung had to intervene to improve the Authority’s functioning. Gurung had previously called out Chairman Bhandari and other officials on a public platform for promoting non-transparent practices.

Even NTA employees have complained about being denied access to the organization’s full budget. “We haven’t been given the full text of our own organization’s budget. Only the part related to our department or branch was provided. This practice didn’t exist before, we don’t know why it’s being done this time,” an employee told TechPana.

The Authority has not only withheld the complete approved annual budget and program for the fiscal year 2082/83 but has also refused to share it under an RTI request. In response to TechPana’s formal RTI application seeking the full text of the approved budget, the Authority gave an evasive reply, stating: “The details you requested are being made public through the annual report regularly published on the Authority’s website, nta.gov.np, under the Right to Information section.”

This means citizens will have to wait until Kartik 2083 to learn about the projects and programs the NTA is implementing this year. Until then, the public will have no access to progress updates or program-level performance. Such secrecy prevents both citizens and stakeholders from evaluating the Authority’s leadership and progress on a project-by-project basis.

The NTA usually publishes its annual report in Kartik each year. The latest report, for fiscal year 2081/82, includes only last year’s activities.

Although the Authority publishes certain details quarterly under Sub-section (3) of Section 5 of the RTI Act, 2064 and Rule 3 of the Regulations, the disclosures are incomplete. While they list project titles, the budget amounts and corresponding action plans are missing.

The NTA has published data for Shrawan, Bhadra, and Asoj of 2082, mentioning the type approval of equipment and general income-expenditure details. According to the Authority, a total budget of Rs 783.5 million has been allocated under the Telecommunications Authority Fund for fiscal year 2082/83, of which Rs 516.9 million is for current expenditure and Rs 266.6 million for capital expenditure.

However, by mid-Asoj, the Authority had spent only Rs 44.6 million, without disclosing the specific headings under which the funds were used. Similarly, the NTA has allocated Rs 2.41 billion under the Rural Telecommunications Development Fund (RTDF) for the same fiscal year, but it has not made public how much of that allocation has been spent.

 

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