Kathmandu, January 20:

While city streets wore a deserted look today due to a daytime curfew, valley denizens, who otherwise are a busy lot, spent their time with great difficulty either watching TV, reading newspapers and calling up friends to know the latest in the city.

It wasn’t a usual morning with office-goers rushing out of their homes and piling into anything they could get hold of, buses, taxis and tempos, to reach their destinations before 8 o’clock when the curfew started. A handful of them were seen hurrying in the streets a little after eight also.

The only few vehicles to pass by security men deployed all over the city were ambulances and those belonging to the press.

Though government offices remained open, staffers said they did so only for the sake of opening them. “Obviously, there was no work, but we had to open the office,” an official said.

While hospitals saw no new patients, no one, too, went to the court. “We did not receive any emergency patient,” said an official of the Bir Hospital.

“No new case was filed in the Supreme Court today,” an official of the apex court said. According to him, Chief Justice Dilip Kumar Paudel had made a list of case hearings, they did not take place as government attorneys and lawyers were absent. The Kathmandu District Court, too, witnessed the same.

However, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority today produced a corruption case in the Special Court. “We were busy in performing internal work,” registrar of the Special Court Lohit Chandra Shah told this daily.

School children enjoyed an extra holiday with some within the Ring Road watching television and others outside the Road playing the whole day long. “Children here are playing cricket, people are reading newspapers and some of them have gathered in streets just to see whats going on outside,” said one Ramesh Shrestha of Balkhu. “They are eager to know whats happening outside.”

“I watched television the whole day long,” a BBS student Barun Ghimire at Sinamangal said. “The government didn’t do a good thing by imposing a curfew, it hampers our studies,” he added.

Students sitting for the SLC sent-up exams came out in the streets, but returned after they came to know that the exams were postponed. Traffic police and security persons informed the students of the postponement in some areas.

A businessman Deves Jung Shah of Pulchowk said curfew hampered his business. “The curfew is in place as the government fears the movement of the seven party alliance,” he said. Shah also said this was not a proper way to deal with the parties.

“Though the existing laws do not bar the government from imposing a daytime curfew, it is an issue of morality whether or not to impose such a strict legal measure,” said NBA president Shambhu Thapa. “This is not a way to rule the people,” he added.

A curfew was imposed in 2000 when a mob threatened the security situation in the Rhitik Roshan scandal. It was also enforced on September 1, 2004, when riots broke out in the city during protests against the killing of 12 Nepalis by insurgents in Iraq.