Kathmandu, March 8:

The Kathmandu district branch of the National Federation of Journalists (NFJ) is going to form a new organisation, Association of National Journalists, as the central committee of the NFJ, according to the Kathmandu NFJ branch, is holding its first general conference in an unfair manner.

“We will form a seperate group under the name ‘Association of National Journalists’ that will comprise of only professional journalists,” Yagya Dhakal, president of the branch, said at a press meeting organised here today. “The central NFJ committee has nominated 172 journalists as delegates, which goes against the spirit of the NFJ statute,” he said: “They have nominated those who are not journalists by profession but political cadres of the Rastirya Prajantra Party and the Nepal Samata Party.”

“We had established the NFJ after spliting from the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) only because the FNJ had started working as a wing of the political parties. But the NFJ is doing the same now,” Dhakal said, adding, the leadership of the NFJ was trying to turn the body into a club of RPP and Nepal Samata Party cadres. “The NFJ is trying to keep the journalists under government control by neglecting its own statute,” he added.Deepak Pathak, secretary of the Kathmandu branch, said the conference organising committee had not published the list of delegates till today even as the conference is scheduled for tomorrow.