Opinion collection disturbed at many places

Problems in understanding technical terms in the questionnaires

Truck carrying questionnaires to Kailali, Kanchanpur stranded

Hundreds of complains every day regarding shortage of questionnaires

KATHMANDU, March 5: The opinion collection program for writing the new constitution has been greatly affected in many parts of the Tarai because of an increasing number of strikes called by the Tharu community. [break]

The strikes have forced Constituent Assembly members deployed in Bardiya to suspend work there and head for Surkhet district. “Yesterday, the team left Bardiya after the campaign was disturbed,” said Mukunda Sharma, spokesperson of the CA secretariat. “The team has now started work in Surkhet, another of its working areas.”

A team deployed to Siraha has also suspended its work following a clash between Tharuwan rights activists enforcing strikes and other political party cadres opposed to the strikes. The local administration has clamped an indefinite curfew in Lahan since noon on Thursday, according to our correspondent Ajit Tiwari.

Two separate organizations of the Tharu community are competing with each other to enforce strikes to protest the government’s alleged decision to include the indigenous community in the Madhesi category. Maoist defector Laxman Tharu of the Tharuhat Autonomous Province has disrupted the campaign in a number of areas including Lahan of Siraha and in Bardiya, Kailali and Banke, while another group called Tharu Kalyankarini Sabha has paralyzed life in central Tarai districts including Chitwan.

According to our correspondent Chandani Hamal, a 15-kilometer queue of vehicles has been stranded in Chitwan since Wednesday.

In Rautahat, the opinion collection teams are getting police escorts to reach the villages, a CA secretariat official said.

A truck carrying questionnaires for Kailali and Kanchanpur districts has been stranded in Attariya since Wednesday, said spokesperson Sharma.

Opinion collection teams have been facing a number of problems in the villages. These range from lack of clarity in the questionnaires to failure of the teams at village level to interpret some technical terminologies.

“For instance, a team member from Myagdi asked the meaning of the Nepali term abhiyojan, to which the CA secretariat staff failed to respond promptly,” said a CA secretariat officer. “Later we approached joint secretary and CA legal adviser Tek Prasad Dhungana for the meaning.” The secretariat officer said the term meant the process of government attorneys filing criminal cases after collecting necessary proof. This they learnt after half an hour of effort.

CA secretariat officers are receiving hundreds of complains every day from teams deployed to the districts. Most of them complain that they are short of questionnaire forms. “We printed just 3.3 million copies, 330,000 copies per committee, which is about five copies per ward in a village development committee,” said the officer. “For instance, if three of the five copies distributed in each VDC ward are taken by the Maoists, NC cadres start complaining why they were not provided a questionnaire to fill.”