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The CPN (Unified Socialist) has unveiled its manifesto for the upcoming local elections.

Unveiling the manifesto at a programme organized in the Capital on Tuesday, Unified Socialist Chairman Madhav Kumar Nepal declared that each household would be provided with electricity up to 200 units free of cost through local government led by the party.

Necessary coordination would be made with federal and provincial governments for this, he highlighted.

He also noted that his party’s manifesto outlines a plan to provide basic electricity service to the houses out of its access and place top priority to provide free health, education and drinking water service through the local government budget.

The manifesto has also included popular programmes that the Nepal-led government did before and the campaign ‘let us build our village on our own’ initiated by the nine-month government of the CPN-UML.

“Each household of the municipality/rural municipality would be provided with 5,000 litres of water free of cost. Drinking water would be made available to the people of the area where drinking water is not within their reach, the manifesto highlighted.

Prime Minister and Nepali Congress (NC) President Sher Bahadur Deuba said that a conspiracy was being made to break the existing coalition in the government. 

Speaking at an event organised on Tuesday on the occasion of the 53rd anniversary of the Nepal Student Union (NSU), a student wing of the NC,  Deuba said that caution should be adopted to thwart the conspiracy. 

Deuba said, “The alliance has benefited the NC. We have got chief ministers and ministers in most provinces. I feel that I have done good work in the NC. The existing political alliance should not be broken at present. There is no situation wherein a single party gets the majority in the poll. So it should continue.” 

The NC President was of the view that the NSU should reach villages and school-level to increase its significance and meaning.

“NSU has its presence in colleges and campuses across the nation, but why it is losing the free student union elections,” he questioned adding that it required consolidating its foundations right from the school level.  

 Citing that he was also the NSU President in the past and students should dream of reaching the noted posts of Prime Minister and President in the future, he took time to urge students to explore excellence in academic careers as well.  

He further claimed that no force would defeat the party in the upcoming elections provided that it remained integrated and intact.   

On the occasion, the PM Deuba honoured NSU  founding President Bipin  Koirala, vice-president Sanad Regmi, general secretary Tika Pokhrel, and members Ramchandra Poudel, Surendra Bahadur Bist, Kedar Neupane, Damodar Gautam, Chakraraj Pant, Basant Gurung and Rajendra Bahadur Shah among others.

The CPN-UML has endorsed the draft of manifesto prepared for the local level elections. 

The meeting held at the party Chairman KP Sharma Oli’s residence in Balkot, Bhaktapur, endorsed the manifesto, according to Deputy General Secretary Prithvi Subba Gurung. 

The UML is scheduled to make public the commitment paper on April 22.

The seventh agriculture census is taking place from tomorrow (Tuesday). For the census that takes place every 10 years, 5,200 enumerators and 1,300 supervisors have been deployed.

The supervisors will visit the houses of total 350,000 farmers at 753 local levels of all 77 districts and collect details about agricultural activities, said Deputy Director General at Central Bureau of Statistics, Hemraj Regmi.

The agriculture census that began six months after the national census will conclude in 45 days while 19 days are allocated for data collection. The country had held the first agriculture census in 2018 BS.

The enumerators will collect details about livestock farming, crops and fishery done by the farmers. The condition of arable and barren lands and fertilizers is also listed for the data collection. The farmers will be asked 24 questions related to agricultural activities.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, around 66 percent population is engaged in agriculture, and agriculture and livestock farming has contributed 27 percent to the gross domestic product.

However, in eight months of the current fiscal year, around one-third of the total imports is related to agricultural products, according to the Department of Customs.

The census is expected to help with the formulation of plan and policy, monitoring and evaluation, said the Department Director Rajan Silwal.

Despite government prioritising agriculture, expected results are a far cry at present. Country's youths leaving for foreign jobs, failure to timely complete national pride irrigation projects, conversion of arable lands into plots and lack of availability of seeds and fertilizers in time among others are blamed for this. Failure to utilise barren lands and distribution of lands to landless squatters are also the concern. The number of landless squatters and small farmers has been around 4 million, according to available data.

According to the sixth census, 116,000 people were deprived of engaging in agriculture due to lack of their lands.

Seventy one percent people had engaged in agriculture for lifetime and 83 percent dependent on agriculture as per the census. Likewise, 42 percent farmers were deprived of agriculture loans.

The coalition partners in the incumbent government today discussed seat allocations in metropolitan and sub metropolitan cities across the country for the May 13 local elections.

In the meeting of the local level election preparation, mobilization and monitoring committee, they also agreed to sit down again and conclude the seat allocation later today itself, advocate Keshab Raj Joshi, legal expert to Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and the committee member said.

The meeting focused on the seat allocations in basically six metropolitan and 11 sub metropolitan cities across the country, he said. 

The meeting coordinated by PM Deuba, also President of Nepali Congress, that took place today morning at the official residence of Prime Minister at Baluwatar, was attended by top leaders of coalition parties—CPN (Maoist Center), CPN (Unified Socialist), Janata Samajwadi Party Nepal and Rastriya Janamorcha.

A Joint Election Operation Centre (JEOC) is to be established at the Election Commission on April 23 under the coordination of the EC.

There would be representation from the EC, home ministry, defence ministry and security bodies in the JEOC. 

The JEOC is going to be established in order to make elections systematic and conduct it in an effective manner.  

A programme has been set to file for candidacies on April 24 and 25 for the local-level election scheduled for May 13.

The JEOC has the main responsibility to make necessary coordination to establish election offices, facilitate, to submit progress reports related to election programmes run by district election offices and the office of the election officer at the EC through the secretariat. 

Making necessary arrangements to resolve problems faced by the office of the Chief Election Officer, District Election Office and other bodies, collecting and reviewing incidents related to election security and election violence and presenting the suggestions to the EC and bodies concerned to control and resolve the problems are also the responsibility of the JEOC. 

The JEOC has to submit the final report before EC after the election.

The suspended Governor of Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) Maha Prasad Adhikari filed a writ petition at the Supreme Court (SC) on Sunday challenging the decision of the Council of Ministers to suspend him.

Spokesperson at the SC, Bimal Poudel, confirmed that Adhikari’s writ petition was registered at the SC.

In his petition, Adhikari has sought to scrap the government’s decision to form a committee to probe into him without prior information and seeking clarification.

A hearing on the petition would be conducted on Tuesday.

The government has formed a panel under the leadership of former SC Justice Purushottam Bhandari to probe into Adhikari, leading to his suspension from the central bank’s governor.

The election symbols for the local level elections have been fixed and included in the ballot paper. The elections of 753 local levels across the country is taking place on May 13. 

The Election Commission stated that the election symbols for the six nationally-recognized political parties have been fixed based on the number of votes they garnered towards the proportional election system in the election to the House of Representatives in 2017. 

In that election, the CPN-UMal bagged 3 million 173 thousand 494 votes, the Nepali Congress 3 million128 thousand 389 votes, the CPN (Maoist Centre) 1 million 303 thousand 721 votes and the Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal 942 thousand 455 votes.

The parties that participated in the 2017 House of Representatives election towards the proportional election system, which have registered with the Election Commission for the local level election and are active in the district will be allocated the same election symbol they had been allocated before although they have not got the recognition as  national party. 

Election Commission spokesperson Shaligram Sharma said that the Commission has decided to include the election symbols of such political parties in the ballot paper of the districts concerned for the purpose of the local level elections.

Of the 79 political parties contesting in the local level elections, six parties are recognized as the national parties while 23 parties have participated in the election before this.

 Likewise, 40 political parties have got approval from the Election Commission to contest the elections this time.