“They said they oppose the EC move arguing that thousands of people would be deprived of their voting rights due to the provision of compulsory citizenship,” said EC joint secretary Shyam Sundar Sharma. [break]
The parties are likely to hold a meeting with Prime Minister Madhav Nepal on Wednesday as the meeting Tuesday ended inconclusively.
The EC campaign has been currently disrupted due to fierce opposition from the Tarai-based parties in the region. The work has been mainly obstructed in Banke, Kapilvastu, Rupandehi, and Nawalparasi, among other places.
“We had to take the move only because we found 20 percent to 30 percent of voters in the Constituent Assembly (CA) election not genuine,” said Nilkantha Uprety, the acting chief of the EC.
The EC had called a meeting with the political parties to settle the dispute, but the meeting ended inclusively after Madhesh-based parties objected to the EC move.
The Madhes-based parties have asked their cadres to obstruct the campaign unless the EC refers to the old voters´ list, not the citizenships, to complete the task.
Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, UML chief Jhalanath Khanal, Nepal Workers´ and Peasants´ Party (NWPP) chief Narayanman Bijukchhe, Madhesi People´s Rights Forum (Democratic) chief Bijaya Kumar Gachchhadar, Sitaram Agrawal from Madhesi People´s Rights Forum and Brijesh Kumar Gupta from Tarai Madhes Democratic Party, among others, were present during the meeting.
In its first phase, the EC has been digitizing voter list in 58 municipalities. Over 500,000 people have already registered their names over the last 10 days.
The EC has stated that the move by the Madhes-based parties has affected the campaign in over two dozen municipalities in the Tarai.
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