Dang, March 5:

The fourth day of the indefinite strike called by several Tharu organisations badly affected public opinion collection on the new constitution in the mid-western Tarai today.

A team of the CA members in Dang cancelled the opinion collection programmes scheduled for yesterday and today due to the bandh. The CA members are busy in attending different interactions organised in the district headquarters after the schedule was obstructed.

Citing unfavourable security situation, the CA team — comprising of Nilambar Acharya, Shivaraj Gautam and Sushma Sharma Ghimire — deputed in the western part of the district postponed its programme. Team leader Shanta Chaudhari said, “We will collect the public opinion from the VDCs later.”

The demonstrators attempted to vandalise a vehicle of the team on Tuesday. However, the team assigned to collect opinion from eastern part of the district has been collecting the peoples’ opinion unhindered. The team collected suggestions from the people of Kavre VDC yesterday. Team members said people’s participation was encouraging.

Locals find questionnaires tough

PALPA: Locals of Rampur VDC in Palpa said the questionnaires prepared by CA teams to collect public opinion on the new constitution were difficult to comprehend. The locals, who filled the forms distributed by a CA team, said they could hardly answer 50 per cent of the questions.

“Three hundred forms were distributed, but not many people could completely fill them up,” Hari Poudel, a local, said. He said that the CA team left for Sahalakot after asking them to submit the filled up questionaires to a local police post on Friday. Even the educated people in the village said that they found the questionaires messy and difficult. — HNS