National
Maoist Centre sets criteria for candidate selection
The ruling CPN (Maoist Centre) has asked its district committees to recommend candidates for the upcoming provincial and federal polls.The ruling CPN (Maoist Centre) has asked its district committees to recommend candidates for the upcoming provincial and federal polls.
A taskforce formed under senior leader Ram Bahadur Thapa on Friday had finalised the criteria for selecting candidates for those elections scheduled for November 26 and December 7.
According to leader Dev Gurung, who is also party in charge of Province 4, the taskforce has set the criteria putting much emphasis on picking candidates with the highest prospects of winning elections.
The party has adopted the strategy on ticket allocation, taking a cue from the local level polls where candidates spending a large sum of money have won at most of the places.
However, the party’s new strategy has not gone down well with some leaders. The future of the leaders who spent all their lives honestly for the party is bleak as they cannot spend money to win polls, said leader Lekhnath Neupane.
The taskforce meeting has decided to accomodate 33 percent women, inclusiveness and seniority, among others, while selecting the poll candidates.
The province committees would finalise the names of candidates and send them
to the taskforce. The party leadership would finalise the candidates.
It was also decided in the meeting to declare constituencies of party’s major leaders before finalising the other candidates. The party is expected to finalise the names by October 2.
Party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has already announced that he would contest from Chitwan-3, with Narayan Kaji Shrestha from Gorkha-2, Shakti Basnet from Jajarkot, Janardan Sharma from Rukum west, Pampha Bhusal from Lalitpur-3, Top Bahadur Rayamajhi from Arghakhanchi, Barshaman Pun from Rolpa, Krishna Bahadur Mahara from Dang, Giriraj Mani Pokhrel from Mahottari and Pravu Sah from Rautahat.
However, a meeting of the party’s women’s wing—All Nepal National Women’s Association Revolutionary—has decided to demand 50 percent women candidates for the provincial polls and 40 percent for the federal polls.
Urmila Aryal, in charge of the wing, said the meeting decided to propose the party for inclusion of the women candidates in the polls.