During a meeting with the ministry officials at the EC office, the commission formally made the request, according to Joint Secretary Anil Kumar Thakur, who is also the EC spokesperson. [break]Thakur said, "We have suggested to the Ministry of Home Affairs to distribute citizenship cards by deploying 305 mobile teams initially and increase the number of the teams to 561 if needed." He said that the teams are expected to be deployed to various parts of the country within one to two weeks.
Meanwhile, he also informed that the EC will continue the voter registration process alongside the citizenship card distribution by the ministry. Before we start any formal preparation for the election, we need to have voter list ready as soon as possible, so the citizenship cards distribution and voter registration will go simultaneously, he said.
While various fringe political parties including Mohan Baidya´s CPN-Maoist have been obstructing the voter regstration process in various districts, the ministry has also assured to provide necessary security to EC officials involved in voter registration process, according to Thakur.
On Friday, EC also decided to ask all the political parties represented in the former Constituent Assembly to clear the legal and other hurdles in the run to the CA elections.
According to Election Commissioner Ayodhi Prasad Yadav, EC is scheduled to hold a meeting with the political parties for the purpose. He said, "We need to take suggestions from the parties regarding the amendments to be made to the election-related acts including the Election Commission Act, Election of Members of Constituent Assembly Act, Electoral Rolls Act, Citizenship Act and ordinance related to them."
EC last Thursday had begun discussion with the major political parties on the 25-point ordinance on removing constitutional difficulties in order to make clear up the confusions that prevailed in the ordinance. "We couldn´t continue formal discussions on major election-related hurdles as the leaders representing UCPN (Maoist) were absent at the meeting today (Friday)," CPN-UML leader and advocate Agni Kharel, who was present at the meeting, said.
Kharel said, "We have suggested to mobilize citizenship distribution teams to all nooks and corners so that all those who have yet to acquire citizenship certificates are not deprived of the opportunity to vote." This will be the last time that citizenship by descent will be provided to the children of those who received citizenship by birth, he added.
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