SLC Computer exam cancelled

By Nitya Nanda Timsina

KATHMANDU, April 23- What would the authorities do after aquestion paper distributed to thousands of students sitting for a big examination turns out to have been lifted straight from a model question in circulation in the market? Cancel the exam.

Education authorities today reached exactly the decision, after a question paper distributed to School Leaving Certificates (SLC) examinees sitting for the exam of Computer Science appeared to be a word-by-word copy from a book of model test papers available in the market.

Monday was the last day of the SLC test, the last examination of the country’s high school education. Chief of the Government’s Controllers of Education Sahadev Bhatta said late Monday that a closed-door emergency meeting held at the Ministry of Education and Sports decided to cancel the examination. The examination will be held at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 8 (Baishak 25).

Authorities were shocked to discover the question paper of Computer distributed to the examinees a word-by-word copy of a model question printed in SLC Model Test Papers With Answers: Computer Science, an Ekta Books Publication by RC Khanal.

When contacted, R.C. Khanal said that it was the sole responsibility of the Controller’s Office, to cross check. "The book appeared in the market more than a month ago; and it was the administration which set the questions. It’s their first and foremost responsibly," he added.

Prashanna Raj Shrestha, a student of GEMS school said he was more than happy to answer a "pretty much familiar set of questions. If only the evaluators would check my paper without prejudices, I would surely have passed with distinction."

Although 23 districts have introduced Computer Science in their high school curriculum, only the students from Kathmandu valley had access to the guidebook released around March.

It was not immediately clear what moves are forthcoming to probe into the incident which, educationists call ‘a strange one’ in the more than seven decade old history of SLC examination, which is considered as an iron gate of Nepal’s high school education system.

Army chief stirs hornet’s nest

By Suman Pradhan

KATHMANDU, April 23 - What exactly did Chief of Army Staff General Prajwalla Shumsher Rana have in mind when he laid down the elusive national consensus as the main condition before armymen could be sent to fight Maoist guerrillas?

This is the question wracking the brains of government policy-makers ever since Gen. Rana last Friday categorically ruled out deploying soldiers into Maoist-affected districts without support from all political parties, including the opposition communists. The implied message, and it was forcefully implied indeed, was that the army brass is loathe take on that responsibility unless political parties get their act together.

Gen. Rana’s remark as such directly contravenes the stated policy announcements of the Nepali Congress government, not to speak of the profound questions it raises about the concept of civilian control over the military as is institutionalized in other democracies.

No less than Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala himself has reaffirmed the government’s intention to mobilize the Royal Nepal Army in implementing the ambitious Integrated Security and Development Package (ISDP).

If all goes well, the government hopes, the package will help revive the economic fortunes of the worst Maoist-affected districts, helping wean away rural public support from the guerrillas. The army plays an integral part in the ISDP, charged as it is with the security aspect of the package. But just when preparations were being made to implement the ISDP, comes General Rana’s bombshell.

What implications does it have for the ISDP? More importantly, what does it tell of the government-army relationship?

To begin-with, Gen. Rana’s statement may be no more than the airing of a genuine desire not to be bogged down in a political problem which was created by short-sighted politicians in the first place. It could merely have been a reflection of the so-called "Vietnam War Syndrome" in which the army feared that it would be sent into battle without clearly defined objectives, and without the necessary political support over the long haul.

Indeed, sources in the army say that the Chief of Staff had this point uppermost in his mind when he made the remarks on Friday. No commander would want to be embroiled in a long brutal battle without the entire nation backing it up, if necessary for the long haul, they say.

While that fear might have been genuine, the timing of Gen. Rana’s comments has raised some serious questions. The first one has been obvious for some time now: who controls the Royal Nepal Army? The general’s statement itself makes that very clear: not the elected civilian government.

Secondly, it is now almost certain that the ISDP has little chance of being implemented in the Maoist districts in its current form because the national consensus the Gen. Rana called for is elusive to forge, if not impossible.

At a time when almost the entire opposition is gunning for the Prime Minister’s head, even holding a dialogue between the ruling and opposition parties is a difficult task, as was demonstrated on Saturday when the communist opposition boycotted a government-sponsored meeting to discuss the ISDP.

ISDP cannot solve problems: Thapa

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KATHMANDU, April 23 - Former Prime Minister and President of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) Surya Bahadur Thapa today said that the government’s Integrated Security and Development Package (ISDP) alone cannot solve the present crisis of the nation.

Speaking at a press conference organised by RPP, Thapa said that the government’s plan to solve the present crisis merely through ISDP would be a mistake.

RPP’s Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting on April 19 & 20 had decided to go ahead with dialogue with various other political parties to end the current political stalemate in the country. On that occasion, the party’s spokesperson Kamal Thapa had presented a concept paper to build national consensus among various political parties to save the country from the present impasse.

"The present scenario clearly indicates that no single political party can solve the present crisis," said Thapa.

"The role of the governing Nepali Congress is obviously more vital to find a way out of it," said Thapa. "But NC’s capacity to do so has waned since it is grappling with inner-party squabble. Even if the party gets united, the present problem confronting the nation is so mountainous that it cannot solve it."

Stressing on the need of national consensus Thapa said, "Let it be the issue of addressing the Maoist problem or army mobilisation or tackling corruption, all party consensus is inevitable."

Thapa also expressed the opinion that the idea of national consensus would remain incomplete without winning the confidence of the King for such move. "Monarch’s goodwill and support is essential to solve the existing crisis."

However any such consensus building efforts should be within the constitutional framework, Thapa said.

Thapa even said that the opposition parties should set aside rigid posture and should come for consensus and agreements.

Abducted Chhetri traced in Lucknow jail

By Kul Chandra Neupane

DAMAULI, Tanahu, April 23 – In a letter sent to his relatives, Prem Bahadur Chettri, a Nepali national and retired Indian armyman, who has remained missing since last month has written that he is currently in detention in Lucknow jail in India.

Chettri has also claimed that he was abducted from Kathmandu with the help of Indian Embassy officials and was taken to India in unconscious state.

Despite repeated attempts, Indian Embassy officials could not be reached for comments. Chettri has said that he has been falsely charged as being a Pakistani intelligence ISI agent and is under investigation. Chettri’s relatives claimed that Ganga Bahaur Barakoti, Chettri’s brother-in-law went to Lucknow and met him after receiving information that he was jailed there.

In his letter, Chettri has detailed how he was abducted and was taken to India. Chettri writes, " I had gone to collect my pensions at the pension camp in Thamel Kathmandu. The official at the camp said that there was error in my pension record and told me to go to Indian Embassy to correct it. When I went to the Embassy along with an official, they arrested me there. They tied me with ropes and made me unconscious using anesthesia. The next day I was in Gorakhpur, India."

Chettri has also claimed that a number of other Nepali ex-Indian soldiers have been summoned for probe under similar allegation. Chettri, a CPN-UML cadre, has appealed to his party and the government to work expeditiously for his release. Chettri served Indian army for over 22 years before he retired a few months ago. Father of two sons, Chettri has a grocery shop in Damauli.

EC directives for fixing polling stations

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KATHMANDU, April 23- The Election Commission (EC) said Monday it had sent the directives to the Election Officials of the thirty districts and to the CDOs and assistant CDOs of the remaining forty five districts to begin the study of upcoming polling centres in each election constituency.

Speaking at a press conference, Purusottam Prasad Sapkota, joint secretary at the EC said the representatives of various political parties, members of the different civic societies, social workers and the intellectual groups will sit for its first round of meetings within a week on the appropriate locations of polling centres in accordance with the policy of the EC and a team will be appointed for the on-the-spot study of those prospective polling stations.

Sapkota said such location of the polling centres will be fixed by the EC on the recommendation of the team.

Of the total of 6, 821 polling stations last year, the figure is expected to shoot up as EC officials said it would increase the number of the polling stations this year. "For every 1500-2000 voters, we’ll have one station each," said Sapkota. Earlier, the EC had fixed one station each for every 3,000 voters.

However, the EC said it will have flexible system for the remote and the far-flung districts considering their geophysical condition and the sparse population. "We don’t want voters to travel more than five kilometers to give their verdict," officials said.

At least each VDC and municipality will have one polling center, and for those remote locations there will not be any changes. In the international borders, the polling centers will be located at least one kilometer afar, experts said.

Instead of open places, enclosed locations like public houses, schools and temples will be used as booths for the polling in the upcoming elections, the EC sources said.

Hear the silence: Hearing impaired give SLC

By Perina Pathak

KATHMANDU, April 23 - Seventeen-year-old Khima Thapa of Butwal is one of the two hearing impaired candidates appearing in the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examinations that have been taking place nation-wide since last week. Sushil Adhakari is another lucky fellow sitting for the final test of the country’s high school education.

Hearing-impaired children began appearing in what is popularly known as the ‘Iron Gate’ examination only since 2055 BS (1998). In the past three years, altogether nine students like Thapa and Adhikari appeared in the SLC examinations - although there are thousands of hearing-impaired children across the country.

The reason why none of the hearing impaired students sat for the important examination before 1998 is that no such thing as a school for deaf children existed. Besides, there was no scientific method of teaching or an effective means of communication to teach such children.

Now that students like Thapa and Adhikari are eyeing for higher education, things seem to be looking up.

All this would not have become possible, had people like Raghab Bahadur Joshi, Kiran Acharya and Indira Shrestha not put their best of efforts for the cause of hearing impaired children. While Joshi and Acharya introduced sign language in Nepal less than a decade ago and facilitated teaching and learning process, Shrestha currently runs The School for Deaf Children which is meant specifically for hearing-impaired children.

The Special Education Council under the Ministry of Education provides the necessary assistance to the school, which in turn is taken care of by the Welfare Society for the Hearing - Impaired Development, a national level non-governmental organisation. There are six schools under the organization.

But people like Joshi, Acharya and Shrestha are still not satisfied with the slow speed of progress in the direction towards imparting education to the disabled children. There is a very good reason behind it. Hardly any college in the country entertains such students for higher education and not a single hearing impaired person has attained a University graduate in the country to date.

Says Joshi, Chairman of the Nepal National Federation of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (NFDH), "Schooling for disabled children was unthinkable during our time. They were taught up to standard seven, that too not very efficiently. Now at least such disabled children can appear in SLC exams."

Laments Acharya, Chairman of an association of the hearing impaired, "Even if they appear in SLC, there is nowhere to go beyond SLC.

ANFSU seeks 50 per cent discount in health services

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KATHMANDU, April 23 - Students belonging to the All Nepal National Free Student’s Union (ANFSU), student wing of the CPN-ML today organized "Silent Siren Program" in front of all the public and major private hospitals demanding 50 per cent discount to the students in all the health expenses.

The union had just successfully completed a protest program demanding discount on all transportation for students only a couple of weeks back. Giving in to their demands the government and the transport entrepreneurs had agreed to give 33 per cent discount to the students on all forms of public transportation. However, some transport groups still are resisting the pressure and have not agreed to give any discount to the students.

"Till now it is only a silent protest program but if no one listens to us, we will be forced to use violence," said Rabindra Adhikari, the president of the union. "And that is going to be very unfortunate. I hope we don’t have to come down to that," he added.

Nepal-India eco-region concept gaining new heights

By Razen Manandhar

GODAVARI, Lalitpur, April 23 - The idea to develop Nepal-India Terai region as an eco-region took a new shape today with experts and stakeholders actually sitting together and chalking out plans and programs to make that dream into a reality.

At the start of a one-day stakeholders’ consultative workshop on Terai Arc Landscape Conservation in Nepal here today, the concerned parties including the government vowed to protect the bio-diversity of the region.

Conservation experts want to connect 11 conservation areas spread across an area of 30,000 kilometers in the Terai of Nepal and India and develop the same into what they call Terai Arc Landscape (TAL). They say connecting the isolated to protected areas is very important for long term conservation of bio-diversity of the region, and a project has already been launched to that effect.

The protected areas include Royal Chitwan National Park, Royal Bardia National Park and Royal Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve of Nepal, plus Dudhwa National Park, Katarniaghat Wildlife Reserve, Sohelwa Wildlife Sanctuary, Valmiki Tiger Reserve, Swehingaohegi Barga Wildlife Reserve, and Corbett-Rajaji National Park of northern India.

Minister for Forest and Soil Conservation Prakash Koirala opening the meet, participated mainly by the locals and local government representatives, expressed the government’s firm commitment to put in place its best of efforts in the direction.

Country Representative of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Nepal Program Dr Chandra P Gurung said, "This is going to be one of the most ambitious and important conservation initiatives in Asia, if not in the entire world," he said. He was addressing the first stakeholders meeting on the TAL conservation.

Dr Gurung added that the program is now a vision, which needs a long-term effort to make it a success. He said, "After a decade the vision will find a shape and will take almost a decade to see full swing of development."

He added that the project needs around six million US dollars for the coming five years. In the long run, it will need a trust of around 20 to 50 million US dollars. He is hopeful that international donor agencies will provide fund for the project. "Agencies like Save the Tiger Fund and other potential major partners are interested to make it a success."

WWF program coordinator, Ukesh Bhuju said that all government institutions, non-government organizations have "technically accepted" the idea and interactions on this issue is going on in various levels. "There has been an agreement between WWF of Nepal and India on this issue," he said.

According to him, TAL Project will not only restore deforested areas outside the protected areas but also address the socio-economic concerns of the local people, who are in fact the major factors to make the project a success.

"The users of the community forest should understand the significance of the TAL and should also be convinced that it will eventually help their economic development," he said.

The Chief Scientist of WWF, Dr Eric Dinestein said that Nepal’s greatest export is visionary approaches to conservation. "This is the prime habitat of tigers, rhinoceros and elephants. This development would provide bigger room for the conservation of the wild animals and will contribute to a global conservation effort altogether."

WWF believes the TAL project is a great opportunity to protect Asia’s remaining habitat for the world’s critically endangered wildlife species. However, the users of community forests are not convinced that their rights over the forest they developed would be protected.

"We should first need to be assured that the community forests would be handled by the government under the Forest Act and our right would be guaranteed," said Hari Neupane, the chairman of Federation of Community Forest Users’ of Nepal. The Ministry of Soil Conservation and WWF NEPAL Program jointly organized the one-day workshop.

Interim order on govt action

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KATHMANDU, April 23 - The Patan Appelate Court today issued an interim order instructing the government not to take action against a senior police officer for trying to do a PhD dissertation on Maoist issue.

Senior Superintendent of Police(SSP) at Armed Police Battalion Chuda Bahadur Shreshtha had filed a writ petition at the Court on Friday after he was required to furnish clarification on why he had chosen the Maoist topic for his dissertation. Shrestha was given 24 hours for clarification.

Judge Bodariraj Pandey passing out the order said, "Until the final disposal of the case, interim order has been issued in the name of the respondents."

Pleading from the petitioners side, Advocate Balram KC had argued that Shreshta had already clarified why he had chosen the topic and had argued that the departmental action was against the law.

The Police Headquarters earlier in February had asked Shrestha to explain the basis on which he had chosen the Maoist issue for his dissertation without taking any permission. And after three months, the Police Headquarter had again sought clarification from Shrestha.

The petition had named The Police Headquarters, Cabinet Secretariat, among others as respondents.

1 policeman killed, another injured in Maoist ambush

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PYUTHAN, April 23 - Maoist rebels waylaid security men heading towards the Nayagaon-based SLC examination centre with question papers and shot one police constable dead and wounded another this morning, police here said.

The last SLC examination started today at the centre at 11.45 a.m., three hours later than the scheduled because of the incident, according to Krishna Prasad Pokharel, superintendent of the examination centre.

Pokharel, however, said today’s examination passed off peacefully with 60 policemen present to ensure safety of the centre conducting examination for 91 examinees.

The killed constable has been identified as Jagat BK from Surkhet and other who sustained serious injuries as Hari Narayan Sharma from Parbat. Injured Sharma has been airlifted to Nepalgunj for treatment.

Police Inspector Hari Wagle, who led the police escort team, said that the rebels opened fire after a land mine planted by them on the Bhalubang-Rolpa village road exploded a few metres ahead of them at Nayagaon VDC-3.

Inspector Wagle said major casualties was averted after a sniffer dog tipped them off the land mine. He added that his constable was killed while trying to cock the rifle, which did not function properly.

The rebels surrounded the policemen from three sides after they blew up the land mine. The rebels fled the scene only after a helicopter arrived at the scene of the incident with police reinforcement from the Regional Police Office in Nepalgunj.

The District Police Office said the police reinforcement searched for the rebels around the nearby jungle using the helicopter. But the helicopter could not land as the rebels kept on targeting it from the ground.

Police have arrested one local, Phurse Karki, after the incident. VDC Chairman Resham Bahadur Thedi Magar claims Karki to be innocent. Police have imposed undeclared curfew in the area following the one and half-hours exchange of fire with the rebels.

"We cannot fight the armed rebels with such obsolete arms. The police department does not equip its personnel with modern arms and this is our biggest weakness," said Assistant Sub-Inspector Shambhu Pradhan after the gunfight.

A day earlier, the rebels had pasted notices in the area, warning people not to hitchhike on police vehicles.

"I also would have been killed in the land-mine blast had I used my vehicle today," Pokharel said.

Meanwhile, 50 policemen stationed at Machhi area police post shifted to Bijuwar police station fearing their personal safety, said Madhav Pokharel, in-charge of the Bijuwar police post. More than 15 VDCs remain devoid of police presence following the removal of the post established around 20 years ago.

Earlier, six policemen had fled their jobs from Machhi police outpost for security reasons last week. A large number of police personnel have been concentrated only on four outposts apart from the district headquarters.

Another report from Damauli, Tanahu stated that police personnel carrying the answer sheets of a SLC examination centre survived a Maoist-laid landmine blast at Samdhunge Khola of Arunodaya VDC-1 today.

The policemen were carrying the seven-day’s SLC answer sheets from Shiddhartha higher secondary school. The land mine went off shortly after the policemen crossed it.

Police have brought the answer sheets safely to the district headquarters, Damauli, said Deputy Superintendent of Police Keshav Adhikari. The site of the incident is located about 16 km south of the district headquarters.