Kathmandu, October 14, 2005

Minister for Agriculture and Cooperatives Badri Prasad Mandal today said the Election Commission would hold the parliamentary elections before mid-April 2007 as commanded by the King even if the political parties do not participate in the polls. “It is the political parties’ right whether or not to participate in elections but the EC would hold the elections in the stipulated time,” Mandal said while interacting with the journalists at the Media Group Nepal today. He claimed that there was no other option but to conduct polls to the House of Representatives to resolve the crisis. Mandal said the Election Commission has the duty to hold the elections within the time frame given by the King and added that the government would provide full support to the EC for the same. He said there are 128 parties registered with the Election Commission and claimed that 121 parties would be in the fray. He trashed the demand to hold elections to the Constituent Assembly. “The political parities only want to create hurdles in the government’s plan to resolve the crisis by putting forth same demands again and again,” Mandal added. He also claimed that the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML have no authority to talk about the Constituent Assembly without declaring dead the present Constitution they had drafted in 1990.

Identity cards for TU hostellers in the offing

Kathmandu, October 14, 2005

Tribhuvan University (TU) is planning to provide its hostellers with Identity Documents (IDs). This is being done to make the TU hostels more systematic, said Dr Hira Bahadur Maharjan, principal at TU. “The process will start immediately after Tihar,” he said. Earlier, students misused their ID cards as there was no monitoring of the ID card system, Dr Maharjan said. “If the cards had been used properly, illegal occupancy of hostels would have been checked,” he said. The forceful evacuations of eight TU hostels, four for men and four for women, where around 500 hostellers reside, lead to tussles between various student bodies and the campus administration every year. For the same reason, the lockout of the Principal’s office since August 7 has still not been lifted. Pranay Singh ‘Munna’, president of Nepal Students’ Union TU Central Campus Committee, said that if TU tried to impose the ID card system without consultations with the student bodies, then the system was bound to fail. “TU needs to discuss this issue with all student bodies before they implement any programme,” Singh said. The TU Central Campus is also planning to put up animal traps in the campus premises to stop cattle from grazing on TU ground. “Cattle-grazing has declined but the practice has not stopped completely due to some stubborn locals,” Dr Maharjan said.