After the taskforce led by Local Development Minister and senior Maoist leader Dev Gurung was unable to resolve the issue of forming local bodies, Friday, they have decided to forward the issue to top leadership.

The meeting of the taskforce, which includes representatives from seven parties, could not reach to any consensus after the Nepali Congress (NC) and Maoists could not be convinced with Unified Marxist Leninist (UML’s) argument for restoring the local bodies as per the previous election result.

In the 1997 local election, the UML had garnered around two-third majority.

Dev Gurung

A senior Maoist leader Dev Gurung
Minister Dev Gurung has said that the issue will now be discussed by the top leadership of the seven parties.

Since the previous local bodies’ tenure expired, a new election has not been held. Successive governments have played with installing bureaucrats or nominating local leadership to head the 58 municipalities, 75 District Development Committees (DDCs) and 3913 Village Development Committees (VDCs).

In recent times, the government-appointed VDC secretaries have also demanded that the political mechanism be appointed to lead the local bodies.

The VDC secretaries have been launching agitations demanding security and installment of local bodies. nepalnews.com sd Feb 01 08