by Kunal Purohit in SCMP, June 19, 2023Nepal’s former king Gyanendra Shah made a rare public appearance earlier this year in the Himalayan nation’s Jhapa district to launch a movement to change the country’s secular constitution and reinstate its identity as a Hindu kingdom. Thousands of Nepalis gathered at the February event to back the cause, with several marches occurring across the country since. Last month, just days before Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal,…
Posts published in “Nepal”
By Anil Giri in The Kathmandu Post, June 19, 2023With the northern neighbour fully relaxing its Covid restrictions, the frequency of bilateral engagements between Nepal and China has grown over the past few months. China has resumed all kinds of visits, junkets and trips while it is also sending politicians of various ranks to Kathmandu to assess the ground situation as the Communist Party of China (CPC) wants to renew its ties with the CPN-UML,…
by Anup Ojha in The Kathmandu Post, Jun 18, 2023In mid-June, a worried couple in their mid-forties visited the Koteshwar-based Narcotics Control Bureau with a problem. The couple came from a well-off family in Bhaisepati, Lalitpur and were concerned about the abnormal habits of their only, 20-year-old, son. Over the past few weeks, their son came home late at night, his eyes red. Curiously, however, he didn’t reek of alcohol or cigarettes. He would easily…
by Nishan Khatiwada in The Kathmandu Post,Jun 18, 2023Rastriya Swatantra Party’s (RSP) General Secretary Mukul Dhakal on May 31 finalised the draft of the party’s new political document with the help of central committee members Ramesh Prasai and Kamal Subedi. The plan was to unveil it on June 22, when it will be a year since the RSP’s formation. The document detailed the party’s ideological line, policies, and its vision on the form of governance,…
By Nishan Khatiwada in The Kathmandu Post, June 17, 2023Earlier, the Koshi province was facing two problems—one related to its nomenclature and the other being the UML-led government falling into minority. And now, there is one more. The Koshi provincial government on Thursday unveiled a Rs36.24 billion budget for the fiscal year 2023-2024 through an ordinance. Opposition parties that had earlier warned the chief minister against governing through ordinances, say they will not support the…
By Prithvi Man Shrestha in The Kathmandu Post, June 17, 2023The Kathmandu District Court on Friday sent 16 people including former ministers Top Bahadur Rayamajhi and Bal Krishna Khand to jail after a hearing in a fake Bhutanese refugee scam. A single bench of judge Prem Prasad Neupane passed the order after the end of a detention hearing that continued for around two weeks. Deepak Dahal, information officer at the Kathmandu District Court, told the…
By Nishan Khatiwada in The Kathmandu Post, June 16, 2023Mother and father Nepali, where are we from?So read one of the placards that a group of youths displayed during a demonstration in Kathmandu on Tuesday. They were up in arms demanding a speedy implementation of the recently-endorsed bill to amend the Citizenship Act. The protest took an unfortunate turn when one of the protesters, Niraj Kumar Kamat from Katahari, Morang, attempted to set himself on…
AFP report in Prothom Alo, June 15, 2023Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch has released a new video of a United Nations worker abducted 16 months ago in the war-torn country, the SITE Intelligence Group said. The man, who identified himself as AKM Sufiul Anam from the UN Department of Safety and Security in Aden, appealed for his release and warned he and two of his fellow abductees were “seriously ill”. In February 2022, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian…
by Nishan Khatiwada in The Kathmandu Post, June 13, 2023The Rastriya Swatantra Party has been focusing on organisation building after it decided to pull out support for the government. By this, the party aims to strengthen its base at the grassroots level for the next local elections, say party leaders. Kabindra Burlakoti, the party’s joint general secretary, said as many as 30,438 members have been verified with their memberships renewed for the next five years.…