After being denied candidacy, Nepali Congress (NC) leader and former lawmaker Suprava Ghimire quit the party on Wednesday. Ghimire, who won in the last CA election from Kathmandu-4, said she felt betrayed after the NC parliamentary board on Tuesday named youth leader Gagan Thapa as the party´s official candidate for the constituency.
Local party members of NC have staged protests in several districts, including Chitwan, Kapilvastu and Tanahun against the party´s selection of candidates.[break]
Leaders from CPN-UML had to backtrack on their decision to field popular actor Bhuwan KC from Kathmandu-1.
CPN-UML Chairman Jhalanath Khanal was forced to remove KC from the list as scores of party members from Kathmandu-1 met the party chief and pressed him to revoke the Tuesday´s decision. “The party chairman in consultation with other top leaders selected UML´s local leader Bidya Neupane in place of KC following strong protests by local party members,” said Surya Thapa, secretary of the party´s publicity department.
However, KC claimed he wasn´t informed about the decision.
He said senior UML leaders had telephoned and texted him to inform about his nomination for Kathmandu-1. According to KC, he met UML´s Kathmandu in-charge Krishna Gopal Shrestha on Wednesday and the latter told him to show up at the district election office to file his candidacy on Thursday morning. “Shrestha and I have planned to visit the election office and file our candidacies at 10:30 am tomorrow,” KC told Republica. He said he is prepared to contest from Kathmandu-1 under the first-past-the-post electoral system.
Sources at the UML head office said the party leaders weren´t quite in a mood to impose their decision on local members from the constituency. In the past, major parties used to field top leaders from the constituency.
It was the same constituency in which then popular UML General Secretary late Madan Bhandari defeated Krishna Prasad Bhattarai in 1991. Later, the party fielded Manmohan Adhikari.
Party members and local bodies in several districts, including Chitwan and Banke, have protested against the decision of the standing committee.
In Dhaulagiri, a group of leaders led by Shreemaya Thakali, zonal in-charge of Dhaulagiri, submitted a memorandum to party Chairman Khanal on Wednesday.
Leaders said they expressed their dissatisfaction as “most of those selected for all the seven constituencies in Dhaulagiri were from the KP Sharma Oli-led faction while local leaders close to Khanal and Madhav Kumar Nepal were sidelined.”
Similar was the case with the UCPN (Maoist). A group of UCPN (Maoist) members from Bhojpura State Committee staged sit-in at the party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal´s residence in Lazimpat on Wednesday afternoon demanding no nomination of candidates from outside the district.
Meanwhile, UML nominated Ranju Napit as UML candidate for Bhaktapur-1 and Basudev Ram Chaudhary for Rautahat-5. The party had kept these two seats vacant until Tuesday. The party is yet to nominate a candidate for Rautahat-6.
Also, top UML leaders decided to change the party´s candidate for Morang-5. It had earlier nominated Pujan Niraula. “Today [Wednesday] the leaders have decided to field a Madhes-based leader Ram Lal Sah in place of Niraula,” said Thapa.
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