NC & UML leaders rule out fair elections unless controversial decisions scraped

KATHMANDU: Influential leaders from Nepali Congress and CPN UML have stressed on scrapping for all controversial decisions made by the erstwhile Baburam Bhattarai government which they claim could influence forthcoming electoral campaigns.

Speaking at the Reporters Club Nepal on Saturday, NC leader Ram Sharan Mahat called on for scrapping all political appointments made by the erstwhile government. He said that those officials appointed by the Bhattarai government should have resigned on their own accord with the change of guard and claimed that the government should not scrap such appointments and transfers while speaking at the program presided by the Club’s President Rishi Dhamala.

Defending the formation of the incumbent government as a means to bring the derailed democratic process back on track, Mahat said appointments and transfers of officials made by the Bhattarai government should be scrapped, even if they complied with government procedures, for ascertaining free and fair elections.

Responding to the recent oppositions made by some political parties against the Chief Justice led government, Mahat clarified that the Regmi government was political parties’s last resort to reinstate a order in the nation.

He urged all the dissenting political parties to participate in the election process and warned that the nation would reel into further crisis if CA elections are not held in June.

Supporting Mahat’s proposition, CPN UML secretary Shankar Pokhrel claimed that a politically motivated bureaucratic order, assembled by the Bhattarai government, cannot guarantee fair and free elections even though the incumbent government is apolitical.

Pokhrel said that the nation did not had alternative other than to hold fair and free CA elections for resolving political crisis and also urged all the dissenting parties to join the CA elections.