NAWALPARASI, June 10: CPN (UML) leader Shankar Pokharel has accused the Madhes-centric parties of trying to deprive the Madhesi people from exercising their franchise in the forthcoming local polls.

UML Standing Committee member and School Department Chief, Pokharel spoke with journalists at the party’s office in Nawalpur and termed the Madhesi leaders warning to boycott the local level polls after their participation in the Prime Minister’s election as ‘contradictory’.

Pokharel said the UML failed to meet the expected victory as it could not take its agendas to the people’s doorsteps in the run up to the local elections. He claimed that the party would muster more than 60 per cent votes in the second phase of the local elections.

“We have made a lot of publicity for the second phase of the local elections,” he said, adding “This is why it is certain that we will become the first party.” RSS

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.