By Our Reporter
At a time when the Supreme Court has not given its verdict on the writ filed against the dissolution of the House of Representatives, the Election Commission said on Monday that it approved the schedules of the mid-term elections of the House of Representatives.
According to a statement issued by Joint Secretary and spokesperson of the Election Commission Raj Kumar Shrestha on Monday, the first phase of the election will be held on Friday, November 12, 2021, and the second phase on Friday, November 19, 2021.
According to the electoral calendar unveiled by the Election Commission today, registration of the political parties will begin on July 15 and end on July 30.
Election programmes for the first phase of the first past the post (FPTP) election will run from October 7 to October 12.
Likewise, the second phase programmes for the FPTP election will be conducted from October 17 to 22.
Similarly, the EC said the final list of the voters will be published on September 8.
The election programmes for the proportional representation system are scheduled from August 18 to October 19.
However, the NC has criticized the EC’s decision.
Vaccines from China a big relief
The KP Sharma Oli-led government, which ignored to bring the COVID-19 vaccines from China for months, in the hope of bringing them from India, has finally started bringing them from the northern neighbour as India denied to supply even the already booked and advance paid vaccines.
The government has decided to purchase 4 million doses of Vero Cell vaccines from China, and the first lot of the vaccine is expected to arrive in Kathmandu on Thursday.
With the availability of the Chinese vaccines, the government is planning to administer the vaccines to all eligible people.
By now only a little more than 2.6 million Nepali people have received the vaccines, and of them, only 759,000 have received the second jab.
Prime Minister Oli, who claimed in January that the government would vaccinate all people against COVID-19 in three months, was unable to bring them for six months thanks to failed diplomacy and PM Oli’s growing dependency on India to remain in power.
The situation has been that worse than 1.4 million senior citizens who received the first jab in March are still unable to get the second jab.
As such, the availability of vaccines from China has come as a big relief to the nation as well as the government, which was drawing flaks from the public for its inability to procure life-saving vaccines. However, while announcing that the government was bringing the vaccines, Prime Minister Oli accused the opposition parties of the delay in procuring the vaccines, which was a baseless claim.
Had PM Oli tried to bring them from China earlier, many people would have already received the vaccines.
Of course, poor diplomacy and the anti-constitutional and anti-democratic activities of the government should be blamed for the unavailability of vaccines. The USA, which decided to provide vaccines to Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, showed no interest to provide them to Nepal. This is a case that indicates the failure of Nepali diplomacy.
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