Neupane to administer oath to Madhes PA members

By Our Correspondents,Janakpur/Dhangadhi, Dec. 23: The newly elected members of Madhes’s Provincial Assembly (PA) are set to take oath from senior-most member Govinda Bahadur Neupane. According to Ranjit Kumar Yadav, secretary at the PA Secretariat, Neupane, who is 71 years old and the oldest person to be elected to the 

Provincial Assembly from November 20’s election, will first take oath from the Province Chief Hari Shankar Mishra. Then, he will administer the oath to his fellow lawmakers. Neupane was elected from Saptari Constituency 4 ‘A’ from CPN (Unified Socialist).  This is his second term in Madhes’s provincial legislature. 

However, Neupane is currently recuperating from an illness at home. If he does not recover, the second oldest member, 70-year-old Sharada Shankar Prasad Kalwar, who was elected as an independent from Bara 2 ‘A’, will administer the oath, Yadav informed.

Secretary Yadav said that the PA Secretariat had not fixed a date for the members’ oath-taking though. “We will hold an all-party meeting on Sunday or Monday and then decide on it,” he shared. A total of 107 assembly members from 10 political parties have been elected to the PA this time. However, no single party has obtained a simple majority so two or more parties will have to come together to form a coalition government.

Meanwhile, the date of the swearing-in ceremony of the newly elected members of Sudurpashchim’s Provincial Assembly has been postponed. The ceremony had initially been scheduled for Monday but now, the PA Secretariat has postponed it to Friday.

Sources said that the decision to postpone the function was taken after consultations with astrologers who said Friday would be more auspicious than Monday.  However, the Secretariat’s Information Officer Yubaraj Jaisi said he was not aware of any such thing and that the postponement was done for technical reasons.