Kathmandu, Oct 5: Former ministers Surendra Pandey and Hridayesh Tripathi, along with Deep Kumar Upadhyay and others, are set to announce a new civic campaign.
A gathering has been scheduled for 3 pm Monday at The Plaza in Pulchowk, Lalitpur, to formally announce the initiative. Organisers said the campaign would operate as a non-political civil society initiative.
Arun Kumar Subedi and Sarvendranath Shukla are also involved in the campaign.
Former minister Tripathi said people from various sectors of society would participate in the initiative. Efforts are underway to bring together doctors, engineers, professors, former government secretaries, former ambassadors and journalists.
Speaking to Ratopati on Monday morning, Tripathi said public discourse has increasingly become divided between the old and new political parties, creating a need for an independent civic institution capable of raising citizens’ concerns neutrally and impartially.
He said that although some people with political backgrounds had initiated the effort, its purpose was not to establish a political party or organisation but to strengthen civil society.
“After Padma Ratna Tuladhar and Devendra Raj Panday, we have not seen an effective independent civil society institution capable of raising its voice on various issues in an impartial and neutral manner,” Tripathi said. “We have simply taken the initiative to get it started.”
He said the organisers had been holding discussions and reaching out to people from various sectors for nearly two months, leading to Monday’s gathering.
The campaign aims to hold the government and political parties accountable on public issues while independently raising matters of concern to citizens.
People’s News Monitoring Service
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