July 31: The parliamentary special probe committee has given ‘clean chit’ to the then finance minister Janardan Sharma in a case related to his alleged involvement in changing the tax rates under the influence of unauthorised persons.

The parliamentary committee formed to investigate the allegation has finally presented its report to the House of Representatives (HoR).    
    
Presenting the report in the lower house meeting on Friday, the committee chairperson Laxman Lal Karna said that the committee did not find the entry of unauthorized person in the finance ministry to change the tax rate. The committee shared the finding after studying the CCTV footage and analyzing the ministry's response and documents and discussion with the finance ministry officials, the state-owned national news agency RSS reported.    
    
"The probe committee did not find the entry of authorized person to fix the tax rate. As there is a dedicated thematic committee to study the impacts of changes in tax rate, this special committee does not need to devote further time in this matter," the report concluded.    
The committee had inspected CCTV installation and its recording at the ministry and sent the CCTV footages to the digital forensic lab of the Nepal Police for its recovery.    
The report was prepared based on documents received from the ministry, talks with office bearers, the report and details recovered from the CCTV footages and other evidences received from the Nepal Police, said Karna.    

The committee was initially provided 10 days for the investigation and later the deadline was extended by a week.    
The then finance minister Janardan Sharma had resigned from his post following the formation of the parliamentary probe committee. Sharma was accused of bringing unauthorized person to the ministry to influence the tax rate on the eve of the budget announcement.