By IANS
Kathmandu : With just three months to go for a historic election, Nepal continued to be on a roller-coaster ride Monday as Maoist students withdrew an indefinite education shutdown but a band of former guerrillas began anti-poll protests.
The powerful Maoist students union, which had last week clashed with students loyal to Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s Nepali Congress party, called off the nationwide education strike it had imposed from Saturday. The strike was to pressure the government to release over 50 of their comrades arrested during violent protests in Kathmandu.
After consultations with student groups affiliated to other major parties, the rebel students late Sunday apologised for attacking an engineering college hostel last week, which had triggered the crisis, and agreed to call off their stir.
Media reports said the eight-party ruling alliance had agreed in return to free their detained supporters. However, there was no immediate official confirmation of the reports.
The government averted one crisis only to be plunged into two more with ethnic groups in the Terai plains going on the warpath once more.
A group of former Maoists, the Janatantrik Terai Mukti Morcha led by Jwala Singh issued a statement warning the government that it was beginning a month-long agitation from Monday to press its demand for an autonomous Terai region.
Calling the upcoming constituent assembly election in November a fraud, Singh said the current rulers of the southern plains would have to quit and hand over power to the rightful plains dwellers.
Even as the Election Commission announced the schedule for the Nov 22 polls, Singh announced his group’s protest programme, which includes a transport strike, general strike and “people’s action”, without specifying what sort of action and against whom.
The Terai region, that has been simmering with violence since this year, with nearly 150 people killed, braced for fresh trouble with the Jwala Singh faction calling a three-day transport strike in the plains from Sep 8.
On Sep 10 and 12, the underground group, declared a terrorist organisation by the US this year, has announced “people’s action”, likely to target government officials and suspected informers.
The month-long protest, Singh said, would culminate in a 48-hour general strike in the plains Sep 16-17.
Meanwhile, another powerful ethnic group from the plains, the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum that debuted as a party this year, warned the Koirala government that it too would start fresh protests if the government didn’t address its demands by Aug 22.
It wants the parliament and the present government to be dissolved before the election.
Earlier this year, the forum staged a series of protests that shut down the plains and boosted its rise as a major force in the region.