Sitting minister to former chief minister in fray in Dang district

By Liladhar Oli

Ghorahi, Nov.13: As the election date draws nearer, the election atmosphere is getting warmer in Dang. The candidates have been busy in door-to-door meetings.  They are also holding a meeting after meeting to attract votes in their favour for the November 20 elections. 

There are three constituencies for the election to the House of Representatives (HoR) in Dang and seasoned leaders in national politics are in the electoral competition. Candidates from incumbent minister Metmani Choudhary to former chief minister Shankar Pokharel and former ministers Deepak Giri and Rekha Sharma and others are competing in the election field.

What is interesting is that although 43 candidates are in race to compete with established male candidates in national politics, three are female candidates in the main competition.

Meanwhile, two former colleagues – Shanta Chaudhary and incumbent minister Metmani Chaudhary – are competing with each other this timein Constituency-1 of Dang. Chaudhary of the CPN (Unified Socialist) is contesting the election on behalf of the ruling alliance. Chaudhary had won the 2017 election from the UML. 

Metmani had defeated Nepali Congress (NC) candidate Sushila Chaudhary in the 2017 election. Chaudhary’s former ally Shanta had helped him fight that election. Shanta had served as the UML's whip in the HoR. Now Shanta and Metmani are rival candidates from two different parties. 

She said that the voters would vote for her in the election due to the role she played in the development of the district along with the nationalist policy adopted by the UML.

In the recently held local level elections, the ruling NC and Maoists had won two local level chiefs each. There are 134, 703 voters in Dang constituency 1. On the basis of the local level elections, the elected ward presidents from the NC, Maoist Center, United Socialist Party and Rastriya Janamorcha received a total of 50,367 votes. The votes of ward chairmen elected from the CPN UML numbered only 27,025. 

Similarly, there is an interesting encounter between former minister Sharma and UML general secretary and former chief minister Pokharel, who was first elected to the HoR in 1994 from the constituency. But he lost the 1999 and 2013 elections to NC candidates. 

He was elected to the Province Assembly from Dang 2 (A) in 2017 election. However, Sharma, a coalition candidate, is backed by a faction of the UML of 2017.  Sharma was elected to the House under the proportional electoral system in 2013 and 2017 as a CPN (Maoist Centre) candidate.

Dang Constituency-2 has 133,000 voters. In the local level polls of May, the candidates for ward chairs from the ruling alliance received 36,721 votes while the UML candidates got 33,593 votes. 

In Constituency-3, NC leader and former minister Deepak Giri and singer Komal Oli are contesting for the HoR seat.  On the basis of the votes garnered in the local level polls, Giri looks stronger than Oli in this constituency. Of the four local levels in the constituency, NC candidates were elected in three while UML won Tulsipur Sub Metropolitan City in the local polls. Ward chair candidates from ruling alliance secured 42,073 votes and the UML candidates 36,509. 

Giri, who was elected in 2013, suffered defeat in 2017.  Singer Oli, who joined the UML after deserting the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, is contesting election with Giri for the first time.