BANGALORE: India on Saturday said it has taken up with Nepal the Pashupatinath temple incident in which two Indian priests were yesterday thrashed, their clothes torn and sacred thread cut by dozens of Maoists who stormed the temple protesting their recent appointment.
"We are in touch with the Government of Nepal," External Affairs Minister S K Krishna told reporters on Saturday on being asked about the incident.
Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood has taken up the matter in Kathmandu with Nepal Home Minister Bhim Bahadur Rawal and Culture Minister Sarat Singh Bhandari who assured him that steps will be taken to ensure safety of the priests.
"We are also in touch with the Pashupatinath Area Development Trust and they have enhanced the security around the temple and they have provided enough security to the priests where they stay and where they operate," Krishna said.
After the incident, Nepal government provided a personal security officer to the head priest of the temple and a platoon of armed police was deployed at the shrine.
The minister said India was aware that "there is Maoist pressure on the temple authorities to prevent the Indian priests from conducting religious ceremonies".
Some 40-50 Maoists, posing as devotees, barged into the 5th century Hindu shrine at around 1.30 pm and broke open the door of a room where the priests — Girish Bhatta and Raghavendra Bhatta — were preparing for daily prayers. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4975039.cms?prtpage=1
2. Nepal MP claims threats by Indian officials, embassy rubbishe
KATHMANDU: A Nepali lawmaker, who left his ethnic party from the Terai plains to join the Maoists, has created a furore with charges that he was threatened with abduction and worse by Indian officials, claims that were repudiated by the Indian embassy in Nepal as baseless.
Ram Kumar Sharma, who left his Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party to join the Maoists, was described as having played a prominent role in getting other MPs from Terai parties to vote for Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ in the prime ministerial election in defiance of their parties’ decision to stay neutral.
Sharma, who now faces action from his former party, is the new politician at the centre of the latest controversy.
On Friday, when Nepal’s fourth round of prime ministerial election flopped once again with neither Prachanda nor his rival, Nepali Congress leader Ram Chandra Poudel, able to muster simple majority in the 601-member Parliament, Sharma created a sensation alleging that he had received threat calls from an Indian embassy staffer, who had identified himself only by his surname Das.
A private television channel on Friday night held a nearly hour-long interview with Sharma and the allegations were splashed over Nepal’s major dailies on Saturday.
According to the MP, Indian officials were trying to pressure him into quitting the Maoist party.
The threat began, he said, with a senior official from Kendriya Vidyalaya, the Indian school run from the premises of the Indian embassy in Kathmandu, ringing him up to inform that his daughter Chandra, who had been admitted in the 11th grade, would have to be removed since there were too many students.
The Maoist MP said he blasted the school official. Soon afterwards, the lawmaker said he received calls from a man who identified himself as working in the consular section of the embassy. The man, Sharma claimed, threatened he would be kidnapped or worse if he continued supporting the Maoists.
The Maoist MP also claimed to have received a call from the Indian ambassador, Rakesh Sood, who, though using diplomatic language, tried to warn him against supporting the Maoists.
EMBASSY REACTION: The Indian embassy rubbished the allegations, saying it disdained to dignify them by commenting on them.
The Maoists, however, played them up on Saturday.
"Maoist leader receives death threats from the Indian embassy," the Maoist mouthpiece Janadisha daily said in a front-page report.
It also linked the threats to the visit to Nepal by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s special envoy, former foreign secretary Shyam Saran.
"Such threats were issued from the embassy at a time Shyam Saran was on an official visit to Nepal," the report alleged. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6270762.cms?prtpage=1
3. Nepal fails to elect PM again, Par vote in vain for the fourth time
Kathmandu: Nepal’s parliament failed to elect a new prime minister for the fourth time yesterday as the deadlock between the three main parties deepened.
Many lawmakers failed even to turn out for the vote, the latest to be held since the coalition government collapsed on June 30 under intense pressure from the opposition Maoist party.
Neither Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal — better known as Prachanda, or "the fierce one" — nor his opponent, centrist Nepali Congress chief Ram Chandra Poudel, managed to win the 301 votes needed to secure a majority.
The result leaves Nepal facing a sixth week without a functioning government, and analysts warned that the stalemate could cause public confidence in the country’s political leaders to collapse.
"This is not just a political crisis, but a constitutional and moral crisis," political commentator Yubharaj Ghimire told AFP.
"If this continues, the political parties will be discredited in the eyes of a public that supported change four years ago," he added, in a reference to the 2006 popular uprising that forced the king to end direct rule and restore democracy.
International concern is growing about the impact of the stalemate in Nepal, which is still struggling to recover from a 10-year Maoist insurgency that cost at least 16,000 lives and ultimately led to the 2008 fall of the monarchy.
The United Nations has urged a swift resolution and India this week dispatched a senior envoy to help resolve the stalemate, which has paralysed the peace process that began when the civil war ended in 2006.
Dahal, whose party holds the highest number of seats in parliament, won just 213 votes, despite intensive efforts by the Maoists to win the support of smaller parties. His opponent Poudel took 122.
The third-largest party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), refused to support either candidate, and urged them both to withdraw and open negotiations for a consensus government.
"In view of parliament’s failure to elect a new prime minister in the last three rounds of voting, we urge both candidates to withdraw," said Ishwar Pokharel, the party’s general secretary.
"The time now is for national consensus, not majority-based government, so that we can conclude the peace process and write the constitution."
Nepal‘s parliament, or Constituent Assembly, was elected in May 2008 with a two-year mandate to complete the country’s post-war peace process and draft a new national constitution.
Lawmakers voted on May 31 to extend its term to give them time to complete the constitution and the peace process, but little progress has been made since then.
A fifth vote has been scheduled for August 18. http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=149752
3. Free Sobhraj, pay damages: UN
KATHMANDU: Though Nepal’s Supreme Court rejected Charles Sobhraj’s appeal against conviction in a sensational 1975 murder case last week, the "bikini killer" still has good reason to be upbeat. The UN gave him a clean chit, supporting his contention that he did not get a fair trial in Nepal, and asking the government not just to release him but to pay compensation as well.
The new twist in Sobhraj’s seven-year Nepal saga came on Wednesday after the Human Rights Committee of the UNHRC forwarded an 11-page document to his lawyer in Paris. The UNHRC took up Sobhraj’s case after his lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, registered a successful complaint in 2008, accusing the Nepal authorities of ordering her client’s arrest and detention arbitrarily and sentencing him to life imprisonment following an unfair trial.
The UNHRC has now given Nepal 180 days to provide Sobhraj with "an effective remedy, including the speedy conclusion of the proceedings and compensation". http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/Free-Sobhraj-pay-damages-UN/articleshow/6263544.cms
