Kathmandu: Nepal's King Gyanendra, who is on the verge of being unseated from the throne, has received another rude shock: utility bills.
The royal family, who has been asked by the former Maoist guerrillas to quit the royal palace in three weeks' time, owe the state nearly NRS75 million (over $1 million) over their electricity, water and phone bills, a report said.
The Narayanhity royal palace, which that is likely to be turned into a museum once the Maoists form the government, owes the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) over NRS47 million for power bills.
Last month alone, the palace ran up a power bill of over NRS1 million though the king and his queen Komal spent long periods in their summer resort in Nagarjuna forest on the outskirts of Kathmandu valley, the Naya Patrika tabloid reported on Sunday.
iting unnamed sources in the NEA, the tabloid said the palace stopped paying its electricity dues in 2005, the year the king seized absolute power with the help of the army and triggered a national uprising that led to the downfall of the royal family the following year.
Despite the king keeping a studied silence on the developments following a historic election last month that gave victory to his bête noir, the Maoists, the phones in the palace have been busy, especially the king's mobile telephone.
According to sources in Nepal Telecom, the state-run telephone agency, the king owes it over NRS 10 million while his mobile phone bill alone accounts for more than NRS 1 million.
Though Nepal has till last month been reeling under an acute power crunch that forced the NEA to impose a weekly 42-hour power outage in the country and led to the closure of dozens of industries, the royal family, despite defaulting on their utility bills, receive uninterrupted power supplies.
The NEA runs a substation with 11 employees inside the palace to ensure round-the-clock supply.
Though the state agencies sent letters to the palace repeatedly asking for payment, the letters were stonily ignored, the daily said.
Besides the royal palace in Kathmandu, the dynasty has also not paid utility bills run up by three more palaces in Hetauda, Pokhara and Nagarjuna, the report added.
Living under the palace's patronage, other relatives have also disdained to pay their power bills, it added.
They include the king's sister Princess Shobha, whose husband was earlier blacklisted for not paying back bank loans, and two of his nieces, Princess Dilasha and Sitashma.
Earlier this year, an investigation found that the king's son, Crown Prince Paras, had misappropriated funds from a nature fund and carted away vehicles and a computer owned by it to his own residence for personal use.
Though Nepal's parliament proclaimed the country a republic last year and said prior to that that the royal family no longer enjoyed any legal immunity, the government has yet not been able to make the obdurate royals pay tax or their bills.
Nor has it been able to revive any of the alleged cases of murder and manslaughter involving members of the royal family and their associates.
The drooping fortune of Nepal's Shah dynasty of kings is expected to get the death blow this month when the newly elected constituent assembly holds its first meeting and formally abolishes monarchy.
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