Kathmandu: The appointment of Biraj Bhakta Shrestha as the Minister for Energy, Water Resources, and Irrigation was greeted with a mixture of cautious optimism and high expectations.
Representing the Rastriya Swatantra Party, a political entity built on the promise of technocratic efficiency and good governance, Shrestha entered the Singh Durbar with a clear mandate to revitalize a sector often described as the backbone of Nepal’s economic future. On April 15, shortly after taking the oath of office, the Minister issued a bold 32-point time-bound directive aimed at streamlining the ministry’s subordinate bodies.
This document was not merely a list of aspirations but a rigorous schedule with specific deadlines ranging from seven to ninety days. However, as the government completes its foundational one-hundred-day period, a comparative analysis between the Minister’s original directives and the recently published progress report reveals a significant gap between political intent and administrative execution.
The energy sector remains Nepal’s most strategic asset, often referred to as “white gold.” With the ambitious goal of exporting 10,000 megawatts of electricity to India within a decade and the burgeoning prospects of trilateral power trade involving Bangladesh, the ministry’s role has never been more critical. Shrestha’s 32-point plan was designed to address systemic inefficiencies, promote private sector participation, and modernize the legal framework governing water resources.
Yet, the hundred-day milestone suggests that while the Minister successfully identified the symptoms of the sector’s malaise, the deep-seated bureaucratic and structural hurdles have proven more resilient than anticipated. Many projects that were supposed to be finalized within the first month remain trapped in the developmental vernacular of “being prepared” or “will be implemented,” signaling a continuation of the procedural delays that have plagued the ministry for decades.
One of the most glaring failures in the implementation of the time-bound directive concerns the determination of wheeling charges and the establishment of an open-access framework for electricity trading. The first point of the Minister’s directive mandated that the Electricity Regulatory Commission (ERC) determine a transparent and standardized methodology for wheeling charges within thirty days.
This was intended to allow private hydropower producers to use the national grid to sell electricity directly to bulk consumers, effectively breaking the state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority’s monopoly. However, this critical reform has been stalled primarily because the Commission itself has remained leaderless for nearly two months. The government’s failure to appoint a chairperson and members to this vital regulatory body has created a vacuum, rendering the Minister’s thirty-day deadline impossible to meet. This institutional paralysis highlights a disconnect between the ministry’s policy goals and the government’s broader administrative priorities.
Similarly, the Minister’s initiative to strengthen Nepal’s hand in international water diplomacy has encountered significant delays. The directive had set a fifteen-day deadline for the establishment of an ‘International Water Resources Unit’ within the Secretariat of the Water and Energy Commission. This unit was envisioned as a digital repository for all bilateral treaties, agreements, and negotiation stances, providing a modernized foundation for Nepal’s interactions with its neighbours.
Despite the urgency emphasized in April, the hundred-day progress report still refers to the unit in the future tense, stating that it “will be established.” This failure to meet a two-week deadline for a purely administrative task suggests that the internal machinery of the commission is struggling to adapt to the fast-paced requirements of the new political leadership. In the complex landscape of South Asian water politics, such delays in institutionalizing knowledge and data can have long-term strategic consequences.
The quest for data transparency and accessibility, another pillar of Shrestha’s reform agenda, also remains unfulfilled. The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology was tasked with establishing a system within sixty days to provide certified hydrological and meteorological data to developers and stakeholders within seven working days of a request.
This was a critical demand from the private sector, as accurate data is essential for assessing the feasibility and risk of hydropower projects. However, the progress report indicates that the system is still under development. For independent power producers who risk billions based on water flow projections, the continued lack of a streamlined data access system remains a major deterrent to investment. The transition from a manual, gate-kept data regime to a digital, open-access one is proving to be a slower process than the Minister’s timeline allowed.
Furthermore, the revitalization of the Nepal Power Trading Company and the publication of a long-term electricity export roadmap have fallen behind schedule. The directive required the board of the Nepal Electricity Authority to make the trading company fully operational within thirty days and to publish a roadmap for long-term power trade. While the NEA has seen significant successes in recent years under its current leadership, the institutionalization of power trading as a separate commercial entity is vital for a competitive market.
The first hundred days of Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha’s tenure present a complex picture of high-minded ambition meeting the cold reality of bureaucratic resistance
The progress report’s admission that the “roadmap is being prepared” indicates that the complexities of balancing domestic supply with international export commitments are slowing down the promised reforms. Without a clear, published roadmap, private investors and international partners remain in a state of uncertainty regarding the government’s long-term strategy for energy commerce.
The issue of “hydrological fines”, a persistent grievance of private developers, also illustrates the challenges of translating directives into technical and legal reality. Due to the impacts of climate change, many rivers in Nepal have seen erratic flow patterns, making it difficult for hydropower plants to meet their “contracted energy” targets, leading to heavy financial penalties. Shrestha had directed that a team provide technical and legal recommendations to modernize these penalty provisions within thirty days.
Despite the lapse of a hundred days, the ministry’s report fails to mention a finalized recommendation or a policy change. This lack of progress on a technicality that directly affects the financial viability of private projects suggests that the task force may be bogged down by the conflicting interests of the NEA and the independent power producers.
Finally, the legislative agenda of the ministry, which is crucial for the long-term governance of the sector, has hit a bureaucratic logjam. The Minister had promised that the drafts of the ‘Water Resources Bill’ and the ‘Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Bill’ would be submitted to his office for approval within twenty days to be subsequently tabled in Parliament. Instead of reaching the legislative floor, these bills are currently stuck at the Ministry of Law for legal opinion.
While legal scrutiny is a necessary step, the failure to table these bills within the hundred days means that the sector continues to operate under outdated laws from the early 1990s. For a minister who prides himself on being part of a “law-making party,” the inability to move these critical pieces of legislation through the cabinet and into the house is a significant setback.
In conclusion, the first hundred days of Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha’s tenure present a complex picture of high-minded ambition meeting the cold reality of bureaucratic resistance. The 32-point directive was a commendable effort to introduce a culture of accountability and deadlines into the Singh Durbar.
However, the failure to meet key milestones regarding regulatory appointments, data transparency, and legislative reform suggests that a minister’s will alone is insufficient to move the stationary gears of the Nepali state. As the “honeymoon period” ends, the Minister must move beyond issuing directives and focus on the gritty, often invisible work of institutional reform and political negotiation.
The public and the private sector are no longer looking for timelines; they are looking for the results that those timelines promised. For Shrestha and the Rastriya Swatantra Party, the next few months will be a test of whether they can transform their activism into effective governance or if they will become another chapter in the long history of unfulfilled promises in Nepal’s energy sector.
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