Miscellaneous
No plan to disrupt local polls: Chand
The Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) on Thursday announced to boycott the local level elections scheduled for May 14 while clarifying that the party has no intention to disrupt the polls.The Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) on Thursday announced to boycott the local level elections scheduled for May 14 while clarifying that the party has no intention to disrupt the polls.
The party, which decided to remove Maoist from its name at its first general convention earlier this month, had resorted to violence to disrupt the second Constituent Assembly election in 2012.
The party’s remarks come at a time when the Home Ministry, Nepal Police and Nepal Army are reportedly preparing integrated security plans for the elections citing threats from extremist groups, including the CPN and various armed forces in Madhes.
In a speech delivered on occasion of the Army Day, Chief of Army Staff General Rajendra Chhetri had also hinted at potential security challenges from the Chand-led party. “The planned local elections are not different from previous elections and holds no meaning. Our party has no plan to participate in the polls or disrupt it,” Chand told reporters on Thursday.
Stating that the then Maoist rebels had boycotted three different elections during the decade-long insurgency, Chand said that Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal had made mockery of people’s struggle and sacrifice by following the road he criticised all his life.
He also used the occasion to portray himself as “a torchbearer of revolution” in the country. He said that his party would not deviate from its ideological line of the “unified rebellion” and continue its struggle unless it suspends the parliamentary supremacy with “people’s government”.
Chand, who was elected as general secretary through the party’s first general convention, also made public the party’s newly-elected 61-member central committee members.