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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