The residents of Rajapur Municipality and Geruwa Rural Municipality in Bardiya have uprooted more than 100 poles installed as part of an electric fencing project along the Nepal-India border, accusing the project contractor of budget misappropriation.   

Former lawmaker Man Bahadur Chaudhary had allocated Rs 6 million for the project under the Constituency Infrastructure Development Programme. The Rajapur and Geruwa residents say that the contractor Khalla Jayapur, who is a cadre of Chaudhary’s party, invested only Rs 3 million for the poles of inferior build quality.

“We demand an inquiry into the project spending. We dismantled those poles because of their poor quality. Some of the poles were not even installed properly,” said Bishnu Rijal, a Rajapur local. 

Chaudhary has denied the allegation against Jayapur. He claimed that there is nothing wrong with the quality of the fences.Electric fencing along the 22 km stretch between border pillars 87 and 98 started in April 2017. The project was brought in an effort to control human-wildlife conflict. Meanwhile, wild animals have started straying inside bordering settlements with the dismantling of the fences.Some villages have reported about wild animals destroying their crops after the fences were uprooted.