Kathmandu, February 3:

The national conventions of the Nepal Students’ Union (NSU) and NSU affiliated to the Nepali Congress-Democratic are likely to be postponed if the unrest in Terai continues for another 10 days, as the student bodies have not been able to hold district conventions due to the unrest.

The NSU has scheduled its 10th national convention in Janakpur for March 9-11 while NC-D affiliated NSU is to hold its ninth national convention in Birgunj on March 12-14.

NSU has organised district conventions in Panchthar, Jajarkot, Bardia and Bara districts while conventions in all the 75 districts have to be conducted by February 17.

NSU general-secretary Badri Pandey said if the Terai unrest continues for another 10 or 15 days, it will affect the national convention.

The NSU central ad hoc committee has asked the district committees to send the list of convention representatives to the centre by February 27.

“We have to change the date for regional conventions but we are planning to stick to the old schedule for the national convention,” said Pradip Poudel, NSU vice-president.

Student leaders are sceptical whether the NSU convention would take place on time, as telephone lines and fax machines of the NSU central office have remained out of order for the last two months.

Meanwhile, rumours about unification between NC and NC-D have not affected preparations made by both the student unions for their national conventions.

Potential presidential candidates from both the student bodies said they would agree to their parties’ decision and be merged “if NC and NC-D get united”.

“We waited for long for unification and still there is no improvement on that front, hence we decided to go ahead with the convention,” said Kiran Poudel, general secretary of the NSU affiliated to NC-D.

NSU vice-president Pradip Poudel said, “We will act according to party’s policy on unification.”

The ninth convention of the Nepali Congress (Democratic)-affiliated NSU could not take place after King Gyanendra took over executive power, while the 10th NSU convention was disrupted on August 14, 2005 in Pokhara following a clash between two factions over irregularities in the voters’ list.

Kalyan Kumar Gurung, joint general-secretary of NSU (NC-D) said if two congresses unified before the convention schedule, the meetings would be automatically cancelled.