Kathmandu, March 8

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Federal Affairs and Local Development Kamal Thapa said the government was doing homework to conduct election to local bodies soon.

Saying that Village Development Committees, District Development Committees and municipalities couldn’t remain vacant for too long, Thapa added: “Election to local bodies is important not only to exercise democracy at the grassroots, but also critical to fight against corruption at the local level.”

DPM Thapa, who is also in charge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was speaking at a regional seminar themed ‘Local self-governance in South Asia: Problems and Prospects,’ which was organised by the Centre for South Asian Studies in Kathmandu.

Elections of VDCs, DDCs and municipalities were last held in 1997. Since then, successive governments announced that they would hold local elections but the issue was given very less importance on the pretext of constitution writing.

Speaking at the workshop, CSAS Director Nishchal Nath Pandey said it was a mockery of democracy that local elections had not been held for almost two decades. He stated that periodic elections after fixing them on the annual calendar were means for strengthening local governance.

While presenting their papers, Prof Bipin Adhikari and Ram Krishna Timalsena highlighted the need to implement the new constitution at the local level.

Meanwhile, experts from India, Bangladesh and Bhutan also shared their respective countries’ experiences with local-self governance.