Deluge follows downpour in Dhangadhi

DHANGADHI: Heavy rainfall since last night has left 90 per cent of Dhangadhi water-logged, displacing over 2,000 families from their houses.

Taradevi Joshi, 76, of Uttarbehadi of Dhangadhi, claimed that she had never seen such a deluge for 30 years. Water overflowing from the inundated roads gushed into roadside shops and godowns destroying property worth millions of rupees. With the roads submerged, transportation was disrupted throughout the day today, forcing schools to postpone their first terminal exams.

Most places in Dhangadi, including LN Chowk, Ratopul, Bishalnagar, Hasanpur, Matiyari, Taranagar, Dhangadigaun, Jugeda, Mahehara and Campus Chowk remained water-logged. From Manehara and Bishalnagar, 20 families were forced to move out and take shelter in their kin’s houses, claimed Nepal Red Cross Society of Kailali.

In Beladevipur, household items were swept away from two houses in Ward No 5. According to a local, Lokesh Bohara, 15 houses have been inundated and may collapse anytime.

As per the District Natural Disaster Rescue Committee data, as many as 500 families have been displaced in Dhangadi municipality alone, while 1,500 families were displaced in Pahalmanpur, Geta, Chaumala, Ramshikharjhala, Phulbari, Hasuliya and Dhansinghpur.

A meeting of the committee held today decided to provide food to the flood victims.

With rain showing no sign of stopping, personnel of Nepal Police, the Nepali Army and Armed Police Force have fanned out in the district to carry out rescue operation.

As per the data with the Attaria-based field office of the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, the district recorded 381 mm rainfall between Thursday night and Friday afternoon.

Field office chief Rajiv Jha claimed that the precipitation was the highest since 2010.

Dhangadi folks have attributed much of the destruction to the encroachment of the river banks. FNCCI central member Gopal Hamal blamed the municipality for approving construction on the river banks.

Girl swept away

DHANGADI: A teenager lost her life after swollen Itabhatta Khola River swept her away on Friday. Thirteen-year-old Chandra Bhattarai of Malakheti VDC, Khamauri, was swept away by the flooded river near her house, stated area police office of Malakheti.

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Dahal moots one office bearer set-up

KATHMANDU: After marathon consultations with the top leaders of the party, Unified CPN-Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal today proposed an organisational set-up having only one office bearer — the chairman. 

According to his proposal, tabled during the first extended meeting of the seventh central committee that began on the premises of Khanna Garment in Lalitpur this afternoon, Dahal presented his ‘Special Organisational and Political Proposal’ in which he proposed that the chairman would be the only office bearer and all other top leaders would be central committee members. The proposal aims to resolve the crisis in the organisational set-up after most of the leaders demanded better portfolios in the last central committee meeting.

During a meeting with bureau heads a few days ago, most of the participating leaders had suggested that the party should induct Baburam Bhattarai as ‘senior leader’ but Bhattarai rejected the suggestion, claiming that it would not serve the purpose of his sacrifice.

Though Vice-chairman Narayan Kaji Shrestha and General Secretary Post Bahadur Bogati were reluctant to quit their posts, they agreed to resign from their posts after Dahal urged them to do so for the sake of the party. 

Even during the meeting with bureau heads and state committee conveners held today, Lokendra Bista, Suresh Singh, Giriraj Mani Pokhrel, Biswo Bhakta Dulal, Hemanta Prakash Oli and Ram Karki had opposed the one office bearer idea. 

However, a survey conducted by Janaahwan Weekly among 700 members who had participated in the latest national congress in Hetauda, had revealed that 61 per cent of the respondents were in favour of one office bearer set-up, while 18 per cent of them were for keeping the decision of national congress intact.

Apparently the survey finding played a significant role to force Dahal to change his earlier stance of keeping the central committee elected by the national congress intact, elevating Dr Bhattarai to ‘senior leader.’

Dahal also proposed that organisational set-up led by him should continue till the second Constituent Assembly election, after which a special national conference should formulate a special organisational policy to develop UCPN-M into a new communist party.

The closed session will begin tomorrow afternoon after all the groups complete their discussions. The team leaders will then reveal their stance on the organisational set-up and their poll strategy.

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Package deal makes parties back and fill

KATHMANDU: Consensus has become a chimera for Nepal’s political parties, and of late ‘a package deal’ has kept ruling coalition and opposition parties apart. Reasons are but obvious: The ruling and opposition parties have their own interpretations of a package deal and its contents. 

The ruling Unified CPN-Maoist and the United Democratic Madhesi Front are seeking opposition’s commitment to all the agreed agendas of the dissolved Constituent Assembly such as republicanism, secularism, inclusion, judiciary, forms of governance and election representation system. “Besides, an agreement on CA poll date, removing legal and constitutional hurdles for the polls, filling vacancies in constitutional bodies, including in the judiciary, determination of the percentage of first-past-the-post election, proportional representation system, reduction of CA seats and formation of a national consensus government are also the issues that need to be included in the package deal,” said UCPN-M Spokesman Agni Sapkota. 

But UML leader Pradip Gyawali said his party has never hesitated to take the ownership of the agreed agendas of the dissolved CA. “Some leaders of the Nepali Congress say they cannot take ownership of the agreed agendas because doing that, they say, will curtail the rights of the sovereign CA. We do not agree with them,” said Gyawali. 

NC has a different take though. NC leader Ram Sharan Mahat said his party was ready to agree on major issues like republicanism, secularism and federalism. “But how can we agree on all issues now? It will be an infringement of CA’s mandate. If we have to agree on all issues, then why should there be an election for the CA?” questioned Mahat. 

The UCPN-M and UDMF say they want opposition’s commitment to issues of constitution because they do not want to see the new CA fail again. “We have heard opposition leaders saying federalism is not their agenda. If the CA fails again, it will fit to their scheme, and they can then push for the formation of a commission,” said Sadbhawana Party Co-Chairman Laxman Lal Karna. 

Prior to CA elections, the UCPN-M, which feared that NC and UML might drag their feet to declare the country a republic, had forced them to incorporate the provision of abolishing the monarchy from the first meeting of CA in the constitution. “Opposition parties have failed to embrace the changes. Empowerment of marginalised communities is not their agenda. Therefore, we fear that if they do not commit to the agreed agendas now, they can reverse the wheel of change later,” said Sapkota. 

UDMF has its own concerns on federalism, the only major issue that proved to be most contentious in the dissolved CA. 

“We want the next CA to choose one model out of three — the 14-, 10- and six-pradesh models that were the property of the dissolved CA,” said Jitendra Dev, Spokesperson, Madhesi Janaadhikar Forum-Nepal. The package deal, he added, should also include the provision of either granting citizenship to those whose names figured in 2008 voter list or enabling them to vote in the next election without voter identity card. “We can even boycott the next election if the voter list issue is not resolved,” he said. 

He added that although parties had agreed to have 240 FPTP seats, Madhesi parties can lobby for five more FPTP seats as per the percentage of Madhes population mentioned in the new census data.
Sabaikhabar.com

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Height of mistake! NASA photo error puts Everest in India

KATHMANDU: The world’s highest mountain should not be hard to spot but American space agency NASA has admitted it mistook a summit in India for Mount Everest, which straddles the border of Nepal and China.

The agency said on its website that Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko’s snap from the International Space Station, 370 kilometres above Earth, showed Everest lightly dusted with snow. The picture spread rapidly via Twitter and was picked up by media around the world, including the US-based magazine The Atlantic, astronomy website Space.com and US cable news channel MSNBC.

But Nepalis smelt a rat and voiced their suspicions on social media. Journalist Kunda Dixit, an authority on the Himalayas, tweeted: “Sorry guys, but the tall peak with the shadow in the middle is not Mt Everest.”

NASA confirmed today that it had made a mistake and removed the picture from its website. “It is not Everest. It is Saser Muztagh, in the Karakoram Range of the Kashmir region of India,” a spokesman admitted in an email to AFP. “The view is in mid-afternoon light looking northeastward.”

He did not explain how the picture from the space station, a joint project of the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe, had been wrongly identified.Everest, which is 8,848 metres high, is a sought-after photographic target for astronauts in orbit but is tricky to capture, according to astronaut Ron Garan, who lived on the International Space Station last year. “No time is allotted in our work day normally for Earth pictures. So if we want to capture a specific point on the ground we have to first know exactly when we will fly over that spot,” he told The Atlantic.

Sabaikhabar.com

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Prez gives five more days for consensus

KATHMANDU: President Ram Baran Yadav has once again given the parties five more days to agree on a prime minister to form a consensus government. This is the third time the Head of State has extended the deadline for the formation of a consensus government as per Article 38 (1) of the Interim Constitution since he first called parties to reach a compromise in seven days on November 23. But the parties in the last three weeks have invariably failed to strike a deal, forcing the Head of State to extend the deadline time and again. 

A press release issued by the Office of the President said the Head of State has given the parties till December 17 (Monday). The President held talks with Unified CPN-Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Nepali Congress President Sushil Koirala, CPN-UML Chairman Jhala Nath Khanal and United Democratic Madhesi Front leader Bijaya Kumar Gachhadar today before granting the parties five more days. After the meeting, Khanal said the parties would forge consensus at any cost. Koirala too expressed hope that there would be a breakthrough. 

According to a source, the President had asked the leaders about the efforts they were making and about the next step he should take in the event of parties’ failure to forge consensus.
Sabaikhabar.com

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NC prez promises consensus in 3 days if Prachanda serious

THT ONLINE

President of Nepali Congress (NC) Sushil Koirala

JHULE: President of the Nepali Congress (NC) Sushil Koirala has expressed his belief that the parties will reach consensus within three days if UCPN-M Chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal shows his loyalty to the parties.

Speaking at the 13th day ceremony of NC leader Bhim Bahadur Tamang’s death at Jhule, Koirala claimed that the parties will reach an agreement within the deadline given by the head of the state to the parties to choose a common prime ministerial candidate and form a consensus government.

On the occasion, Koirala said that the consensus between the parties could be forged within three days if UCPN-M Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal is ready to play his role seriously.

He further said that the parties should not intervene in the formation of national unity government and instead help to build it.

Koirala remarked that the fresh election could be possible in April/May if parities reach an agreement in five days.

Sabaikhabar.com

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Three killed‚ 7 injured as bus veers off road

KATHMANDU: Three persons were killed on sport and 7 other sustained injuries when a passenger bus veered off the road at Kalpingkot VDC in Sindhupalchowk district on Thursday morning. 

The bus (Ba 2 Kha 6579) bound to Kathmandu skidded off the road and fell some 250 meters down the road at Chilaune of the same VDC.

The identification of the deceased is yet to be ascertained .
Sabaikhabar.com

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