kathmandu • It has been a humiliating couple of years for Nepal's King Gyanendra. First, the erstwhile living deity was stripped of absolute power. Then his subjects took his face off the national currency, renationalised his palaces and decided to abolish the monarchy.
Now he has been ordered to pay an electricity bill of $880,000 (£442,000) for the vast Narayanhiti Royal Palace in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital, and several other royal residences around the country.
The government used to pay all the gas, water and electricity bills for the palaces used by the Shah Dynasty, which has occupied the Nepalese throne for 239 years.
But government officials now say that it stopped paying those bills in 2006, after a democratic uprising forced the king to relinquish direct rule over the impoverished Himalayan nation of 29 million people.
"He should pay," Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, the Minister of Water Resources and chairman of the Nepal Electricity Authority said.
"Before, the king was getting money from the state, but that has all changed now." A local newspaper quoted a Nepal Electricity Authority official as saying: "We send the bills every month but no one cares."
This is the latest in a string of humiliations for the king, who took the throne in 2001 after his elder brother, Birendra, was shot dead.
King Gyanendra imposed direct rule in February 2005, vowing to end a decade-long Maoist insurgency, but was forced to back down the following April after months of pro-democracy protests.
Last year the government signed a peace deal with the Maoists and bowed to their demands to strip the king of his constitutional powers as head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
The government renationalised all of his palaces in August, although it allowed him to continue occupying them until a parliamentary election decided the future of the monarchy. In December parliament agreed to abolish the monarchy after parliamentary elections in April and to transform Nepal into a democratic republic.
The king, whom loyalists regard as the incarnation of a Hindu deity, insists that the government is liable legally for his bills.
But Karki said: "If he does not pay, then we are free to cut him off."
