KATHMANDU, July 21 -- A day after Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba reportedly talked over the telephone and assured former prime minister and a senior leader of the CPN-UML , who is undergoing treatment at a News-Dehli-based hospital, of bearing all the treatment expenses, former health minister Gagan Thapa has said that the government is not authorized to bear the treatment expenses of any former dignitary.

Thapa, who is also a key leader of the ruling Nepali Congress (NC), said that the Public Health Service Act-2018 , which came into force on September 18, 2018, doesn't not allow the government to bear the financial expenses of a person if s/he is to be treated in a foreign country.

"Notwithstanding anything contained in the prevail...