Nepal Royal family owes over 450,000 dollars to electricity authority

Nepals Royal family is reportedly the countrys biggest defaulter in paying electricity bills.

Kathmandu, May 5 : Nepal's Royal family is reportedly the country's biggest defaulter in paying electricity bills.

The family of King Gyanendra owes nearly 470,000 dollars (Nepalese rupees 33 million) to Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) in the form of unpaid electricity bills for 18 months till January 2007.

Among the defaulters are nine royal houses in the Capital.

All of them stopped paying electricity bills a few months after the royal takeover on February 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.

Narayanhiti Palace tops the list of defaulters with over 340,000 dollars (NRS 24.3 million) in arrears, while Nagarjun palace owes 33,000 dollars (NRS 2.4 million), Kantipur quoted an NEA source as saying.

Nirmal Niwas has not paid over 32,000 dollar (NRS 2.3 million), while Chaunni bungalow owes the state utility 21,000 dollars (NRS 1.5 million).

The names of five royal relatives appear in NEA's list of defaulters. The list includes names of King Gyanendra's aunt Helen Shah, her daughter Jyotsana Rajya Laxmi Devi Basnet, Dhirendra Shah's daughter Pooja Rajya Laxmi Shah, the late Prekshya Rajya Laxmi Shah and Bharati Rajya Laxmi Singh.

The Royal family used to pay the utility bills, until the 2005 Royal takeover. Since July 2005, none of them has paid any electricity bill, the source said.

The electricity bill payment continued to be irregular even after King Gyanendra handed over the power to political leaders after the April 2006 pro-democracy movement.

"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," the source was quoted as saying.

"Considering their profile, we cannot take measures such as discontinuing power supply," he added.

ANI