Submit your Article

The election symbols for the local level elections have been fixed and included in the ballot paper. The elections of 753 local levels across the country is taking place on May 13. 

The Election Commission stated that the election symbols for the six nationally-recognized political parties have been fixed based on the number of votes they garnered towards the proportional election system in the election to the House of Representatives in 2017. 

In that election, the CPN-UMal bagged 3 million 173 thousand 494 votes, the Nepali Congress 3 million128 thousand 389 votes, the CPN (Maoist Centre) 1 million 303 thousand 721 votes and the Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal 942 thousand 455 votes.

The parties that participated in the 2017 House of Representatives election towards the proportional election system, which have registered with the Election Commission for the local level election and are active in the district will be allocated the same election symbol they had been allocated before although they have not got the recognition as  national party. 

Election Commission spokesperson Shaligram Sharma said that the Commission has decided to include the election symbols of such political parties in the ballot paper of the districts concerned for the purpose of the local level elections.

Of the 79 political parties contesting in the local level elections, six parties are recognized as the national parties while 23 parties have participated in the election before this.

 Likewise, 40 political parties have got approval from the Election Commission to contest the elections this time.

The ruling coalition has decided to finalize the candidates of the metropolitan and sub-metropolitan cities across the country by tomorrow.

A meeting of the senior leaders of the alliance held in Baluwatar this morning made the decision to this effect.

Similarly, CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal's Secretariat said that the meeting has decided to take the reports on the situation of the coalition and preparations for the elections in the remaining provinces tomorrow itself.

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and Pushpa Kamal Dahal among other senior leaders were present in the meeting.

The government has decided to hold the local level elections on May 13.

Russian forces accelerated scattered attacks on Kyiv, western Ukraine and beyond Saturday in an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their Western supporters that the whole country remains under threat despite Moscow’s pivot toward mounting a new offensive in the east, Associated Press reported.

Stung by the loss of its Black Sea flagship and indignant over alleged Ukrainian aggression on Russian territory, Russia’s military command had warned of renewed missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital. Officials in Moscow said they were targeting military sites, a claim repeated — and refuted by witnesses — throughout 52 days of war.

The toll reaches much deeper. Each day brings new discoveries of civilian victims of an invasion that has shattered European security. As Russia prepared for the anticipated offensive, a mother wept over her 15-year-old son’s body after rockets hit a residential area of Kharkiv, a city in northeast Ukraine. An infant and at least eight other people died, officials said.

In the towns and villages just outside Kyiv, authorities have reported finding the bodies of more than 900 civilians, most shot dead, since Russian troops retreated two weeks ago. Smoke rose from the capital again early Saturday as Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported a strike that killed one person and wounded several, according to the Associated Press.

The mayor advised residents who fled the city earlier in the war not to return.

“We’re not ruling out further strikes on the capital,” Klitschko said. “If you have the opportunity to stay a little bit longer in the cities where it’s safer, do it.” 

It was not immediately clear from the ground what was hit in the strike on Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district. The sprawling area on the southeastern edge of the capital contains a mixture of Soviet-style apartment blocks, newer shopping centers and big-box retail outlets, industrial areas and railyards.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said an armored vehicle plant was targeted. He didn’t specify where the factory was located, but there is one in the Darnytskyi district.

He said the plant was among multiple Ukrainian military sites hit with “air-launched high-precision long-range weapons.” As the US and Europe send new arms to Ukraine, the strategy could be aimed at hobbling Ukraine’s defenses ahead of what’s expected to be a full-scale Russian assault in the east.

It was the second strike in the Kyiv area since the Russian military vowed this week to step up missile strikes on the capital. Another hit a missile plant Friday, Associated Press reported.

The Russian missiles hit the city just as residents were emerging for walks, foreign embassies planned to reopen and other tentative signs of the city’s prewar life started resurfacing, following the failure of Russian troops to capture Kyiv and their withdrawal. 

Kyiv was one of many targets Saturday. The Ukrainian president’s office reported missile strikes and shelling over the past 24 hours in eight regions across the country.

The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine, which has been only sporadically touched by the war’s violence, reported airstrikes on the region by Russian Su-35 aircraft that took off from neighboring Belarus.

In apparent preparations for its assault on the east, the Russian military has intensified shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in recent days. Friday’s attack killed civilians and wounded more than 50 people, the Ukrainian president’s office reported.

On Saturday an explosion believed to be caused by a missile sent emergency workers scrambling near an outdoor market in Kharkiv, according to AP journalists at the scene. One person was killed, and at least 18 people were wounded, according to rescue workers.

“All the windows, all the furniture, all destroyed. And the door, too,” recounted stunned resident Valentina Ulianova.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said Saturday’s toll was three dead and 34 wounded. 

Nate Mook, a member of the World Central Kitchen NGO run by celebrity chef José Andrés, said in a tweet that four workers in Kharkiv were wounded by a strike. José Andrés tweeted that staff members were unnerved but safe, according to the Associated Press.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who met with Vladimir Putin this past week in Moscow — the first European leader to do so since the invasion began Feb. 24 — said the Russian president is “in his own war logic” on Ukraine.

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Nehammer said he thinks Putin believes he is winning the war and “we have to look in his eyes and we have to confront him with that, what we see in Ukraine.”

A recent Nepal Rastra Bank report suggests that property price in Kathmandu Valley is increasing at the rate of 27.7 percent a year, doubling the real estate value every 3.5 years. 

In fact, almost every developing area of Nepal is witnessing this phenomenon. Property-price appreciation is starker still in the Madhes province and the Tarai towns of Sudurpaschim province. 

Generally, in developing countries like Nepal, when an infrastructure project starts in an area, the value of nearby lands go up. And this is true in the case of Kathmandu-Tarai fast track.  

Almost 30km of the 72.5km expressway passes through agricultural land, which also includes some residential areas. There are two big settlements along the way: Khokana-Bungamati of Lalitpur and Nijgadh of Bara, which are also the start and end points of the under-construction motorway. 

Land prices have soared in Khokana-Bungamati and Nijgadh. But then it is not just the fast track that is driving up land values in these areas. 

Many high-profile people are buying lands from locals and pushing their value with the help of realtors, claim locals.   

When this reporter asked residents of the Shikali temple area in Khokana about the skyrocketing land value, they said ministers, ex-ministers, senior politicians, senior civil servants, judges, and other celebrities have made significant investments in local lands. 

These individuals are allegedly working in cahoots with realtors to jack up property prices. 

Some residents of Khokana also accuse the activists and leaders campaigning against the fast track of succumbing to greed and selling their lands. 

The people of Khokana and Bungamati have long been protesting against the expressway project, which, they fear, could erase the culture and heritage of these two ancient Newa villages. 

Nepal Man Dangol is among the leaders of a struggle committee against the fast track. But some villagers have accused him of “double standard” for selling a plot of his to the army and buying off properties close to the project site.  

In his defense, Dangol says he let the army acquire his land as he urgently needed money. The decision to sell the land was “approved by the struggle committee,” adds Dangol. 

He also doesn’t believe land prices in Khokana and Bungamati have been deliberately inflated. 

“In the outskirts of Kathmandu Valley, land prices have reached over Rs 5m an aana (an anna is 31.8 square meters),” he says. “Prices in Khokana are still around 3m an aana.” 

But Dangol’s claim doesn’t explain the sheer volume of land transactions taking place in Khokana. 

According to the Land Revenue Office, Lalitpur, 20 to 25 land plots in Khokana are bought and sold every month. Just a few years before, there were barely five land transactions a month. 

Locals say, in parts of Khokana, land value has quadrupled in a matter of years. 

And then there are also claims of CPN-UML, the main opposition party in the federal parliament, playing a role in making Khudol of Khokana the start point or ‘Kilometer Zero’ for the fast track.  

Although the project’s first draft had suggested Khudol as the fast track’s starting point, it was shifted 4km south to Farsidol of Bungamati following protests in May 2018. But the army again rezoned Khudol as Kilometer Zero without offering any explanation.  

Rabindra Maharjan, ward chair of Lalitpur Metropolitan City-21, says 300 Khokana residents had submitted a petition to the then Defense Minister Ishwar Pokhrel against Farsidol’s designation as the fast track’s entry point. 

“The majority of petitioners were from the UML faction of the then Nepal Communist Party (NCP),” he says. “You can guess why the Kilometer Zero mysteriously came back to Khudol.” 

But Maharjan himself is accused of abandoning the cause of Khokana-Bungamati residents. Many people say he started distancing himself from the campaign soon after he was elected ward chair. Maharjan denies the allegation. 

“I was the one to start the campaign,” he claims. “Many times, I have condemned the decision of my own party-led government in the Khokana case.” 

While the cause of Khokana and Bungamati residents may have been consigned to the back burner, the buying and selling of the now premium properties continue. 

Dangol, who seems to have fallen out of favor with Khokana residents, says allegations against him weaken the campaign. He says he is a businessman and his decision to invest in properties should not be misconstrued as a betrayal. 

“I have bought and leased lands in various parts of Kathmandu Valley, mainly for farming purposes,” he says. 

According to the army, compensations for 4,744 ropanis (a ropani is 508.74 square meters)—or 96.47 percent of the total land that needs to be acquired—have been handed out. But compensation for 427 ropanis of land is as yet unsettled due to the Khokana dispute. 

In Khokana, per ropani price of land has been set at Rs 4.4m, Rs 3.6m and Rs 2.5m, varying with location. In Bungamati, land has been valued at Rs 4.1m, Rs 3.3m, and 2.4m respectively. 

Elsewhere in the town of Nijgadh, the end point of the fast track, land prices have gone up as well. 

During ApEx’s ground reporting, our team interviewed Sanjay Lama, a local hotel owner and real estate investor. He never thought property value in the area would shoot up. 

“Real estate has boomed in Nijgadh,” he told us.  “Land prices have gone up almost 10 times in the past five years.” 

At the time of the interview, the price of a kattha (a kattha is 338.62 square meters) of land connected to the Mahendra Highway was about Rs 4m. Within a one-kilometer radius of the highway, the price was Rs 3m per kattha. 

Before the expressway plan, land price hadn’t crossed Rs 300,000 a kattha, according to Lama. 

Since Nijgadh will be the nearest Tarai town from Kathmandu after the construction of the fast track, many industrialists have bought lands there. Some have bought up to 50 bighas (one bigha is equal to 2528.81 square meters) of land to set up factories. 

Most of these land buyers are from Kathmandu, Makwanpur, Jhapa, Chitwan, Morang, Sarlahi, Saptari, Mahottari, Dhanusha, Siraha and Surkhet districts. 

Lama conceded that competition between local realtors had, to an extent, contributed to land-price hikes. 

The fast track also passes through parts of Makwanpur district, but land rates there have not witnessed drastic changes. 

In Makawanpurgadhi Rural Municipality, for instance, there has been no noticeable change in land transactions, both in terms of price and frequency.   

Says Harka Maya Rumba, vice chairperson of the rural municipality, even though some people had plotted their land in the initial days of the fast track construction, they could not get buyers. 

“People were not interested in investing here as there are unlikely to be arterial roads connecting the villages to the expressway,” she adds.