Keep CJ-led govt free from party syndicate: Bhandari

SAPTARI, Feb 19: Chairman of the Rastriya Madhes Samajwadi Party and former minister Sarad Singh Bhandari has said that the election government to be led by the Chief Justice should be kept out of the influence of the ´party syndicate´.



Addressing a new conference organised by the party´s Saptari district chapter in Rajbiraj on Tueday morning, he said the Chief Justice should be allowed to work independently regarding who should be included in the Council of Ministers under his leadership and the modality of conducting the election as the credit and the blame of holding or not holding the election would be of the Chief Justice himself.[break]



He also said that the election government should not be tied with what he called the party string.



Alleging that the major parties were conspiring to reducing the CJ-led government into a puppet of the parties in the name of the political mechanism, Bhandari said his party would not accept such a government.



"Although the agreement among the four political forces for constituting the election government under the leadership of the standing Chief Justice is morally and institutionally positive, the agreement should be endorsed only after agreement is reached among all the parties represented in the dissolved Constituent Assembly," he said and warned that it would be difficult to enforce the agreement if that was not done.



Bhandari alleged that the country was held hostage by the ´four-party syndicate´, pointing out that election would not be possible only through the agreement between the four parties.



Pointing out that it would be necessary to determine again the electoral roll and the constituencies prior to holding the election, the Rastriya Madhes Samajwadi Party chairman said that the citizenship certificate alone should not be made the criteria for registering the voters. It would be difficult to hold the election if the citizenship certificate was alone made the basis for registering the voters´ names, he added.



He also called for re-demarcating the constituencies based on the recent national census as there has been demographic changes in the different places of the country.



To the query by journalists whether the political parties have become unsuccessful in that they had to ultimately give the leadership of the election government to the Chief Justice as they failed to reach consensus, Bhandari said, "Only the Constituent Assembly has failed, not the parties.



The proposal to form the election government has come based on the agreement among the political parties."

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