Kathmandu, October 30:

Nepali Congress central working committee member Arjun Narsingh KC said today that an election to a constituent assembly would not be held in free and fair manner without the management of the Maoist arms before the election.

Addressing a programme at the Reporters’ Club, KC, who has been involved in the talks process, said that issue of arms management dominated the talks. “NC has proposed that the Maoist’s People Liberation Army (PLA) must go to cantonment areas in the first place, their fighters and weapons be verified in the second phase and the fighters must be separated from their arms in the third phase and all those things must be done before the constituent assembly election,” KC said, adding that the parties were holding bilateral and multilateral talks on those issues.

KC also said that the parties in conflict were doing extensive homework so that issues of arms management, interim constitution and interim government and declaration of the date for constituent assembly should be sorted out by the second week of November. Reiterating NC’s stance on the status of monarchy, he said: “The status of the monarchy should be as specified by the declaration of the House of Representatives on May 18 and its fate should be decided by the constituent assembly.”

He also termed the demand of a referendum on monarchy “irrelevant” and said it was not the demand of the Jana Andolan II. NC-D leader Dr Minendra Rijal, however, said the sovereign people should be allowed to directly decide on the fate of monarchy, adding that the political parties had snatch the people’s right to do the same.

“Neither the people took to the street to lose their freedom, nor did they support the political parties to retain the monarchy,” Rijal said.

He added that a referendum was the best option to decide on the fate of the institution of monarchy. Co-chairman of the Rastriya Janashakti Party Dr Prakash Chandra Lohani said that free and fair election would not be held unless the PLA and Maoist militia were separated from their arms.