Within a year, BP was arrested and King Mahendra vacated his residence. BP himself was pushed to a state of nearly non-existence by the King. He was either forced to go in exile or imprisoned in a jail in isolation.
The jail in isolation has now turned into a site for commemorating BP Koirala but it still lacks the objects to remind people about their first elected prime minister.The telephone set used by BP Koirala was sent to the jail on Monday as the latest item to be enlisted in the BP Museum. The item was taken to Nepali Congress office to find out whether BP used it. And GP Koirala was the only person to identify it.
Six-time prime minister and Nepali Congress president GP Koirala, now in his late eighties, picked the receiver, checked it and confirmed it was the item BP used five decades ago, according to Parashuram Pokharel, chairman of BP Museum in Sundarijal.
“Girija Babu inspected the item very curiously and identified it,” said Pokharel who took the telephone set from businessman Divyamani Rajbhandari Monday morning.
Rajbhandari must be a telephone trader that time and took it for maintenance. BP’s name has been crafted in the front side of the set but one of the push buttons does not work.Pokharel said the museum has received a number of belongings of late BP Koirala for preservation and the telephone set is latest one.
Pokharel, however, complained that the Maoist-led government has started discouraging the people’s initiatives for developing the jail into a site to commemorate first elected president of the country.
“Eight percent of the grant was cut in this year’s budget and Maoist cadres have been continuously disturbing the renovation work there,” said Pokharel. The museum needs about Rs 1.5 million to carry out development works and look after other administrative affairs.
(Photos by Yuvraj Acharya.)
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