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Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya has directed the chief election officers and election officers to conduct the local level elections responsibly and with due sensitivity.

Addressing a province-level training of trainers on operation and management of the Local level Elections-2079 BS organized by the election Commission, Nepal here today, he stressed on the need of making the local level election free, fair and frugal.

Chief Election Commissioner Thapaliya said the Election Commission has forwarded all the processes required by the laws and the constitution for the local level election and the Election

Guidelines and self-declaration provisions will make the candidates more accountable.

He added that the Commission will set up a mechanism to monitor and follow up on the compliance of the election code of conduct.

The Chief Election Commissioner said telephone and internet facilities were accessible at 10,200 polling booths.

Chief Secretary of Province no 1, Dr Ram Prasad Ghimire said the election should be taken as a festival and all should become responsible for conducting it in a free, fair and fear-free environment.

One hundred and twenty officials, including the chief election officers and election officers from 11 districts in the province except Khotang and Okhaldhunga are taking part in the training of trainers.

CPN-UML and Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal have agreed to forge an alliance in the local level elections.

UML Local Development Department Chief Devendra Dahal and RPP-N's Local Body Mobilization Department Chief Sushil Kumar Shrestha signed a five-point agreement to forge the electoral alliance.

Following the agreement, RPP-N candidates will contest the elections under the electoral symbol of UML.

The two parties have agreed to implement the agreement after the permission of the central level.

Meanwhile, UML and Pariwar Dal have also agreed to forge an electoral alliance.

CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal  Dahal has removed the photo of Kulman Ghising, Managing Director of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), from the election poster following widespread criticism.

He was criticized from various walks of life for using the photo of a government staffer in the election poster.

The party was also criticized on social media after the cadres started canvassing votes by using the photo of Ghising

The Election Commission has banned the government employees from participating in the campaign of local level elections.

Later, the party exited the poster and removed the photo of Ghising.

The photo of former Energy Minister Janardan Sharma has also been removed from the poster.

Vladimir Putin vowed Tuesday that Russia’s bloody offensive in Ukraine would continue until its goals are fulfilled and insisted the campaign was going as planned, despite a major withdrawal in the face of stiff Ukrainian opposition and significant losses, Associated Press reported.

Russian troops, thwarted in their push toward Ukraine’s capital, are now focusing on the eastern Donbas region, where Ukraine said Tuesday it was investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It was not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.

Russia invaded on Feb. 24, with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, the capital, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly regime. In the six weeks since, the ground advance stalled and Russian forces lost potentially thousands of fighters and were accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.

Putin insisted Tuesday that his invasion aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed rebels and to “ensure Russia’s own security.”

He said Russia “had no other choice” but to launch what he calls a “special military operation,” and vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.” 

For now, Putin’s forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Donbas, which has been torn by fighting between Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces since 2014, and where Russia has recognized the separatists’ claims of independence. Military strategists say Moscow appears to hope that local support, logistics and the terrain in the region favor its larger, better-armed military, potentially allowing Russia to finally turn the tide in its favor, according to the Associated Press.

In Mariupol, a strategic port city in the Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel mill claimed a drone dropped a poisonous substance on the city. It indicated there were no serious injuries. The assertion by the Azov Regiment, a far-right group now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that while experts try to determine what the substance might be, “The world must react now.” Evidence of “inhuman cruelty” toward women and children in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv continued to surface, he added, including of alleged rapes.

“Not all serial rapists reach the cruelty of Russian soldiers,” Zelenskyy said.

The claims came after a Russia-allied separatist official appeared to urge the use of chemical weapons, telling Russian state TV on Monday that separatist forces should seize the plant by first blocking all the exits. “And then we’ll use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” the official, Eduard Basurin, said. He denied Tuesday that separatist forces had used chemical weapons in Mariupol.

Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said officials were investigating, and it was possible phosphorus munitions — which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons — had been used in Mariupol, Associated Press reported.

Much of the city has been leveled in weeks of pummeling by Russian troops. The mayor said Monday that the siege has left more than 10,000 civilians dead, their bodies “carpeted through the streets.” Mayor Vadym Boychenko said the death toll in Mariupol alone could surpass 20,000.

Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak acknowledged the challenges Ukrainian troops face in Mariupol. He said via Twitter that they remain blocked and are having issues with supplies, while Ukraine’s president and generals “do everything possible (and impossible) to find a solution.”

“For more than 1.5 months our defenders protect the city from (Russian) troops, which are 10+ times larger,” Podolyak tweeted. “They’re fighting under the bombs for each meter of the city. They make (Russia) pay an exorbitant price.”

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the use of chemical weapons “would be a callous escalation in this conflict,” while Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said it would be a “wholesale breach of international law.”

US President Joe Biden for the first time referred to Russia’s invasion as a “genocide.” He was even blunter later Tuesday, repeating the term and saying: “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”