Birgunj, May 26

Parsa residents are excited about the upcoming second phase of local level elections scheduled for June 14 in 41 districts of four Provinces — 1, 2, 5 and 7.

Political parties in Parsa have started mulling over possible nominees to contest for various posts in the polls. Ajay Diwedi, Om Prakash Sharma, Dina and Bijay Sarraf from the Nepali Congress and Sundar Prasad Kurmi, Nirmala Devkota, Chiranjibi Acharya and Peetambar Acharya from the CPN-UML have been listed as possible candidates for the post of mayor of Birgunj Metropolitan City.

Similarly, Pradip Subedi and Bimal Shreewastav are possible candidates for the mayoral post from Rastriya Janata Party and Rastriya Prajatantra Party, respectively. The CPN-Maoist Centre has yet to list out possible mayoral candidates from the party.

Earlier, agitating Madhes-centric parties had warned to boycott the second phase of elections. However, they’ve agreed to participate in the polls after the government recently decided to increase the number of local units from 744 to 766. The government has also decided to upgrade Biratnagar and Birgunj sub-metropolises to metropolitan cities.

Parsa district comprises one metropolitan city, one municipality and 12 rural municipalities, while Birgunj is the economic hub of Province 2. Waste management, road expansion, integrated urban management and development of Birgunj into a green city are common election agendas of the local political parties.