WI THOUT F EAR O R F A V O U R Nepal’s largest selling English daily Vol XXIX No. 182 | 8 pages | Rs.5 O O Printed simultaneously in Kathmandu, Biratnagar, Bharatpur and Nepalgunj 33.2 C 13.5 C Thursday, August 19, 2021 | 03-05-2078 Nepalgunj Jomsom Aided by Deuba ordinance, dissidents split two parties Madhav Nepal applies for CPN UML (Samajbadi) and Mahantha Thakur for Janata Samajbadi Party (Loktantrik). ANIL GIRI UML (Samajbadi). I urge all to partici- KATHMANDU, AUG 18 pate in this movement and support us. I appeal to all to mobilise to strength- An ordinance introduced by the Sher en the communist movement and Bahadur Deuba government has led to mega campaign for democracy and splits in at least two parties, marking nationalism,” said Nepal. what observers say an unprecedented Oli has called Nepal’s move a ‘black political event. day in Nepal’s communist movement’. After Madhav Kumar Nepal, a Though the Nepal faction has not senior communist leader, applied made it clear yet how many parlia- for a new party—Communist Party mentarians it commands, one of its of Nepal Unified Marxist Leninist leaders said they have support of at (Samajbadi)—at the Election least 30 lawmakers. Commission, following the promulga- Some senior UML leaders who had tion of the ordinance, the country’s earlier supported Nepal have not largest party, the CPN-UML, has split. joined the new party. The UML is led by KP Sharma Oli. The new party will be led by Nepal, Similarly, the Janata Samajbadi with Jhala Nath Khanal, a senior com- Party, the fourth latest force in munist leader and former prime min- Parliament also lost a chunk after ister, ranking second. Khanal is cur- Mahantha Thakur registered Janata rently undergoing treatment in Delhi. Samajbadi Party Nepal (Loktantrik). Bhim Rawal, Surendra Pandey, “We decided to form a new party Gokarna Bista, Ashta Laxmai Shakya due to the discriminatory attitudes of and Raghuji Pant are some of the lead- KP Oli,” said Rajendra Pandey, who is ers who were with the Nepal faction close to Nepal. “Oli refused to correct but have not joined the new party yet. his mistakes. He did not even admit As per the application for party reg- POST PHOTO: ELITE JOSHI his mistakes.” istration at the Election Commission, A man splashes saffron paint to create a lotus pattern on the dome of the Swayambhunath Stupa in Kathmandu on Wednesday. The registration of a new the proposed strength of the new par- party by Nepal brings to end a ty’s central committee is 95. long-standing feud between him The ordinance on Wednesday also and Oli in the UML. On Tuesday, facilitated the formation of a party led Oli had expelled Nepal and 13 by Thakur, a senior leader from the other lawmakers. After applying Madhes. In what may be dubbed an INSIDE How photojournalism for the new party, Nepal issued a irony, Thakur’s Rastriya Janata Party statement alleging that Oli had had merged with Upendra Yadav’s pushed the communist move- Sanghiya Samajbadi Party in April Pandemic may leave Nepal’s ment towards dissolution. last year because of a similar ordi- poor more deprived, says has evolved in Nepal “There is a need to reorganise nance the erstwhile Oli government and transform the UML. So we had brought. planning commission report have decided to register the CPN >> Continued on page 2 KATHMANDU: Although Nepal made significant progress in reducing mul- On World Photography Day, Nepali photojournalists tidimensional poverty for five years prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the share what it was and is like to work in the country. pandemic could disrupt the past gains, a new report on Multidimensional Poverty in Nepal has warned. Multidimensional pover- ty covers the various deprivations experienced by the poor in their daily lives. According to the report titled ‘Nepal: Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021’ released on Wednesday by the National Planning Commission, some 18 million people in Nepal – 63.5 percent faced vulnerability of depri- vation in at least one of 10 areas determining the status of multidi- mensional poverty. Multidimensional Poverty Index (PMI) is measured based on deprivation across three sec- tors and 10 sub-sectors. (Details on Pg 2) Most parties faring poorly on internal democracy KATHMANDU: For the Nepali Congress- led government, formed last month, governance does not seem to be a pri- ority. The Congress party, which was in opposition for three and a half years after the 2017 elections, was critical of the KP Sharma Oli govern- ment over its governance failure. The POST FILE PHOTO Nepali photojournalists have played a crucial role in covering Nepal’s historic events. Congress currently is embroiled in its internal issues, and the most PINKI SRIS RANA prominent one is its 14th general con- daily newspaper. LALITPUR, Aug 18 vention. On Saturday, it decided to “Gorkhapatra started publication postpone its general convention, for in 1901 and it took the paper 26 years the fourth time, to the last week of Monika Deupala was a high to publish its first photo of a common- November. As per the party statute, school student when she first got er, and when it finally did, it marked the Congress should hold its periodic interested in photography. By the time the beginning of Nepal’s photojour- general convention every four years. she was pursuing her undergraduate nalism,” says Min Ratna Bajracharya, The 13th general convention that degree in media studies, she had a veteran photojournalist. elected Sher Bahadur Deuba as party already set her mind on becoming a Over the years, photojournalism in president was held in March 2016. photojournalist. During her final year, Nepal has grown exponentially and Had the party followed its statute, the she interned as a photojournalist at there are now more active photojour- convention would have been held the Nepali Times, an English weekly nalists than ever. But many photojour- before March last year. Owing to newspaper. nalists say that the media industry internal differences and citing the “For me, the internship served as a still overlooks the significance of domestic political situation, the party window to the world of photojournal- photojournalism and does not give the postponed the national jamboree by a ism and I thoroughly enjoyed the expe- profession its due importance. rience,” says Deupala. Bajracharya is one of the few year to March 2021. (Details on Pg 3) Impressed by Deupala’s work, her people who have closely observed the editor offered her a full-time photo- country’s photojournalism landscape Traders ordering goods for journalist position at the newspaper. over the years. Fifty-six-year-old Since then, she has covered a wide Bajracharya got interested in pho- Dashain well in advance range of issues from acid attack vic- tography in his teens while working KATHMANDU: Nepali traders have start- tims, labour and migration to tourism as an assistant at his uncle’s curio ed placing early bird orders for mer- and culture. shop at Swayambhu. chandise from China to prevent a At just 25 years old, Deupala is one “I used to interact with foreign tour- repeat of last year’s fiasco, when they of the few female photojournalists ists and many of them carried camer- were left without inventory during in Nepal. as which as a young boy I found really the peak shopping season due to “Since many of my relatives are fascinating,” says Bajracharya. delayed shipments, insiders said. Last used to seeing me walking around Cameras at the time were expensive year, hundreds of inbound containers with a camera, I often get asked by and the young Bajracharya didn’t were held up at the northern border them to come and take pictures of have the means to purchase one, leav- point due to Covid-19 restrictions in their social events,” says Deupala. ing him with no option but to seek China, with the result that they “Many are still unaware of the differ- help from those who owned cameras. missed the Dashain shopping spree. ence between a photographer and a “Since I couldn’t afford a camera, Traders said that goods ordered for photojournalist. While photography is I started asking people who had one the summer season arrived in the all about visuals, photojournalism is to teach me photography but nobody winter and vice versa, resulting in using photos to tell stories.” agreed. So I started taking cameras on big losses. Nearly 2,000 containers Although photography in Nepal rent and learning the craft on my holding clothes, shoes, cosmetics, dates back to the mid-1800s, own,” says Bajracharya. electronics and industrial raw mate- photojournalism traces its root to But this was just his fascination rials were stuck at the Chinese bor- a photo of a commoner (a woman) with the camera. It was only in 1987 der, and most of them arrived in the using a charkha that was published that Bajracharya got into photojour- country after the Dashain festival had on the April 26, 1927 issue of nalism. ended. (Details on Pg 5) Gorkhapatra, Nepal’s oldest national >> Continued on page 8 C M Y K THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2021 | 02 NATIONAL BRIEFING Pandemic may leave Nepal’s Landslides obstruct Flooded river inundates Saptari settlements Dang-Salyan road SAPTARI: poor more deprived, report says Over 150 households have been displaced after the flooded Jita BIPLAB MAHARJAN road section,” said Nabin Roka, a resi- river entered Ram Tol and Sardar Tol SALYAN, AUG 18 dent of Kapurkot. “Dozers clearing in Tilathi Koiladi Ward No 7 of the landslide debris has become a com- district on Tuesday.