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Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC), the state-owned monopoly, hiked the prices of petroleum products.

The NOC has decided to increase Rs 3 per litre each in petrol, diesel and kerosene.

As per the new revised rate, the petrol will now cost Rs 131 per litre and diesel and kerosene will cost Rs 112 per litre.

The NOC has also decided to increase the price of aviation fuel for domestic airlines by Rs 5 and international carriers by $100 per kilo liter.

Now, the aviation fuel for domestic airlines and foreign companies will cost Rs 106 per litre and $995 per kilo litre.

The NOC, however, has not increased the price of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).

Political brief

Nepal recorded 11,352 new Covid-19 cases and four deaths on Wednesday. 
According to the Ministry of Health and Population, the infected rate in the country has reached 52.6 percent. 
As per the latest data provided by the ministry, a total of 23,409 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours of which 11,352 people were tested positive. 
As many as 613 infected people have recovered from the disease.  
 

As many as 41 laboratories across the nation have been found not conducting the Covid-19 tests.

The Ministry of Health and Population said that Nobel Medical College Teaching Hospital in Biratnagar, Gajendra Narayan Singh Hospital in Rajbiraj, Province Public Health Laboratory in Janakpur, Kalaiya Hospital, Malangawa Hospital, Bir Hospital, Star Hospital, Nepal Korea Friendship Municipality Hospital, BP Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital, Chitwan, Trishuli Hospital, Bhaktapur Hospital , Janamaitri Hospital and Shahid GangaLal Hospital among others are the 41 government and private laboratories which have not been conducting the tests.

National Public Health Laboratory had given permission to 104 government and private laboratories to conduct the Covid-19 tests.

India reported 2,82,970 new Covid-19 cases, 1,88,157 recoveries, and 441 deaths in the last 24 hours, the Economic Times reported.

The active caseload currently stands at 18,31,000. The daily positivity rate stands at 15.13 per cent. Omicron case tally stands at 8,961.

Finally, the ruling coalition has heeded the Election Commission and agreed to hold local elections at the end of April. This clears the way for elections to all three tiers of government, forestalling a worrying political and constitutional vacuum. It could also break the current political logjam. As important, timely local elections will prevent a repeat of the ugly post-2002 period when local bodies were without elected officials for 15-long-years, their absence spawning a corrosive culture of ‘corruption by consensus’.

The ruling coalition, and particularly Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, had been hesitating to announce local elections as it feared the April timing would benefit CPN-UML, the main opposition, and harm the coalition partners, including Nepali Congress. But constant pressure from the UML as well as the civil society paid off and the coalition had to relent. However this decision came about, it is the right one. There can be no democracy without a periodic renewal of people’s mandate.

Also read: Editorial: Everyone’s responsibility

Covid-19 will continue to stalk local elections, even though the country is projected to be well off peak-infection by April-end. More worryingly, the Election Commission could struggle to properly enforce election code of conduct. In 2017 local elections, some ward-level candidates had spent up to a million rupees in campaigning; a whopping Rs 50 billion were spent just on campaigning for local elections across the country. If running in local elections is so costly, contesting provincial and federal elections has become prohibitive, barring all but the richest folks from contesting.  

Does the commission have enough money and manpower to strictly enforce the code of conduct across the country, come April? Can it defy those in power and function with a high level of independence? How will it ensure compliance with covid protocols? How will the commission, historically notorious for buying all kinds of unnecessary vehicles and equipment on election-eve, minimize its costs this time? The deliberations on these vital questions have to start today. Two-months is not a long time given the scale of the task: managing elections across 753 local units, with tens of thousands of candidates in the fray.

The District Administration Office, Lalitpur has decided to halt all the services other than essential ones from Thursday.

Saying that the Covid-19 cases have been increasing rapidly of late in the Kathmandu Valley and some of the staffers of the office have also tested positive for Covid-19, the office has decided to halt all the services except for emergency ones until further notice.

Chief District Officer Ghamshyam Upadhyay said that the office has stopped issuing citizenship certificates and national identity cards among others from today.

Students of the Biratnagar-based Nobel Medical College, which has been accused of charging more fees than the amount fixed by the government, have reached Kathmandu to pile pressure on the government.

The students led by Manish Bhattarai, coordinator of the Medical Education Struggle Committee, came to Kathmandu saying that the Nobel Medical College has not refund the students who have been charged additional fees yet.

Saying that the Nobel Medical College has been cheating the students, Bhattarai said that they would continue their protest until the college refunds the extra fees collected from the students.

It has been learnt that the Kathmandu Medical College has also been charging extra Rs 600,000 from the students.

The government has been urging the medical colleges to refund the additional fees of the students but to no avail.