Royal relatives in Nepal refuse to pay bills

KATHMANDU: Nepal's Royal Palace on Sunday blamed the government for non-payment of its staggering Rs 3.3-crore electricity bill, after power authorities expressed their helplessness to take action against the high-profile defaulters.

"It is the responsibility of the government to pay the bills of electricity and telephone of the royal palace and other royal family members on time," a royal palace staff said.

Nine residences belonging to the royal family have not paid their electricity bills since King Gyanendra's takeover in February 2005, according to the daily.

The embattled King, who was forced to give up his absolute rule after 14 months and was stripped of his powers, tops the list of defaulters with more than Rs 30.5 million
rupees in arrears. Of this, he owes Rs 24.3 million alone on his sprawling Narayanhiti palace.

The figure excludes 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, a Nepal Electricity Authority source was quoted as saying.

The names of five royal relatives also appear in NEA's list of defaulters.

But no action has been taken against the King or his family so far, the source said.

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

In fact, the royal residences faced no power cuts even when the whole country went through up to 17 hours of load-shedding per week as recently as two months ago, the
source said.