After weeks of uncertainty in the middle of Nepal’s contention parliamentary elections, the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) is now set to last four more months. The country’s acting government and the opposition UCPN Maoists have reached an agreement to extend the UNMIN’s mandate, which was to end on September 15. (Watch a related story here.)

Nepal’s caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and Maoist Chairman Puspa Kamal Dahal reached the agreement late Monday at the prime minister’s residence. This was the first time Chairman Dahal was present in the prime minister’s residence since he resigned in May 2009.

Earlier, the government and Maoists had sent separate letters to the UN. The government had requested the UN to monitor Maoist’s militants only, whereas the Maoists had requested the UN to monitor both the armies.

According to the final agreement, the UNMIN will monitor both the Nepal army and Maoist militants. The government and Maoists have also agreed to integrate and rehabilitate the Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) combatants within four months starting in mid-September. Integration and rehabilitation of the Maoist militants is one of the major tasks that the political parties have failed to do in the last two years. The interim constitution states that integration and rehabilitation should be completed within 6 months of the initiation of the constitution assembly, which has been around now for over two years.

-Rajneesh Bhandari

Nepal’s cabinet decided that the prime minister should have the final say on whether or not the UN mission can remain in Nepal – the problem is, the parliament failed once again to elect a prime minister.

On Tuesday Nepal staged its seventh attempt in more than two months to agree on a successor to Madhav Kumar Nepal, who is now a caretaker prime minister. It was Nepal’s cabinet that decided the fate of the UN mission rests with the prime minister, acting or not. However, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon wants the future of the mission to be decided after the formation of a new government. (Check out a related post here.)

In the seventh run-off election, neither of the leading candidates – Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda of Nepal’s largest party Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (UCPN-M) and Ramchandra Paudel, vice chairman of the second largest party Nepali Congress (NC) – received a needed majority vote. This didn’t come as a surprise, as UML and other madhes-based parties have remained neutral in the voting so far and show no signs of altering their stance.

So what will happen to the UN mission? It seems the caretaker prime minister will have no other option than to decide. The UN mission is currently scheduled to end on September 15, and the eighth round of elections will only happen on September 26. And as of now now there is no indication the eighth run-off election will have any different outcome than the seventh.

The UN mission in Nepal is drawing to a close, but the Maoist military may not want them to leave too soon. Film@11 correspondent Rajneesh Bhandari reports from Kathmandu in the latest episode of “Around the Planet.”

It has been more than seven weeks that Nepal is without a prime minister.

For the fifth consecutive time, none of the candidates received enough votes to claim the majority. Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal got only 246 votes in his. Nepali Congress’s Parliamentary Leader Ram Chandra Paudel garnered only 124 votes.

The inability to elect the New Prime Minister has affected the peace process and writing for new constitution. It has also affected the working atmosphere in government offices.

Critics claim that the Maoist Supremo Prachanda’s failure to win the election has affected his image in Public. The next election will be held on September 5, 2010. But it is still not clear whether Nepal will get a new prime minister on that date, with the growing indifference among political parties.

CPN UML and Madhes-based parties who have got winning votes have remained neutral in the voting that took place five times.

–Rajneesh Bhandari

Even though Nepal is not a safe haven for international terrorists, the United States has cautioned India that Nepal could pose a threat.

A report from the US State Department was made public last week warning India that members of extremist groups could transit from Nepal. The report claimed that Muhammad Omar Madni, a member of the terrorist group Lashkar-e Tayyiba (LT), traveled through Nepal en route to New Delhi in June of last year.

“The large ungoverned space along the Nepal/Indian border exacerbates this vulnerability, as do security shortfalls at Tribhuvan Airport, Nepal’s international airport,” the report says.

However, the report has given Nepal a clean sheet on international money laundering, saying, “There were no indications that the country was used as an international money laundering center. There were no prosecutions or arrests for money laundering in 2009.”

Regarding the bombing of a Catholic Church in May, the report said that it was conducted by the Nepalese Defense Army (NDA), a Hindu extremist group that was responsible for shooting a Catholic priest and bombing a mosque in 2008. The leader of this group has since been arrested and their activities appear to have ceased, the report said.

- Rajneesh Bhandari

There was a hope today that Nepal will get a new prime minister. But Nepal has failed to elect a new one for the fourth time in a month after Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal resigned from power. In the fourth round of election held on Friday, Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal bagged 213 votes while his opponent Nepali Congress’s Ram Chandra Poudel garnered 122 votes.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) (CPN-UML) and an alliance of four Madhes-based parties today decided to abstain from voting. While parliamentarians gathered on Friday in the House in New Baneshwore to vote for their candidate, a dozen lawmakers missed the opportunity as they arrived too late. Deputy Prime Minister Bijay Kumar Gachchhadar and a few others reached the House after the doors were already closed and voting started.
 
Just a few hours ahead of voting, the Communist Party of Nepal ML split up after serious disputes erupted over choosing a candidate. The Indian Government sent former ambassador to Nepal Shyam Sharan to help broker a deal between the three major political parties, but the attempt failed as none of the nominees got a majority.

It has been over a month since the prime minister resigned, and such a power vaccuum is uncommon even for Nepal. People are confused and hoping that the next election – some two weeks away – will bring needed certainty.

- Rajneesh Bhandari

Watch an interview with Rajneesh below:

Twenty-two year old Nihita Biswas was hoping for a honeymoon at last with her 66-year-old husband. But the Supreme Court of Nepal denied any possibility of this when it sentenced the man known as “the Bikini killer” to life imprisonment.

Biswas’ husband is Charles Sobhraj, the French serial killer also known as the “Serpent” who is suspected of at least 12 murders throughout Asia. He was ultimately convicted of the 1975 murder of American radiology student Connie Jo Bronzich.

Sobhraj has had a storied career as a con man, drug dealer, jewel thief and murderer, with ambitions to start his own “Manson family.” But Biswas, who studies political science and literature at a university in Kathmandu, denies that her husband is anything other than “intelligent and different from the crowd.”

“I am the wife of Sobhraj, I will remain the wife of Sobhraj, and my love will remain the same,” Biswas said. “I went in front of the jail and stayed there till midnight (on the day he was convicted), though it was raining.”

Biswas fell in love with Sobhraj while working as a translator, and they claim that they married in the jail. The affair and the marriage made Biswas a celebrity overnight.

After the court’s verdict on Friday, Biswas and her mother, Sakuntala Thapa, who is one of Sobhraj’s lawyers, accused judges and the court of taking bribes and issuing a bias verdict.

Two lawyers filed a contempt of court against them on Sunday, and Biswas and her mother were detained by the police for one day. They were released after apologizing for their accusations.

Life imprisonment in Nepal lasts 20 years. Biswas could get her honeymoon, then, after all—13 years from now.

–Rajneesh Bhandari

Tigers amaze tourists and scare villagers in Nepal, but maybe the incense burned and the diyos lit for the tiger god Bag Bhairav are working.

The tiger population in Nepal has increased this year, according to a recent data released by the government on the occasion of the first “Tiger Conservation Day.”

There are total of 155 adult tigers—or, about six adult tigers per 100 square kilometers. Last year, the record showed a total of 121 adult tigers in Nepal. Officials said this was a good population for breeding purposes.

This is good news for conservationists, as the worldwide tiger population is decreasing due to deforestation, encroachment and poaching. The total population is estimated to be 3,500.

The governments of Nepal and India signed a joint resolution to work together to conserve tigers. India and Nepal together hold over fifty percent of the world’s tigers.

The resolutions were signed as an outcome of the 4th Nepal-India Consultative Meeting on Trans-boundary Biodiversity Conservation, at a function held in Kathmandu on Thursday.

“Besides having common boundary, we are facing similar challenges of tiger conservation. Such relation is extremely important for combating illegal wildlife trade and landscape level conservation for tigers and other wild animals,” said SP Yadav, the joint director of the National Tiger Conservation Authority of India.

Tiger Population Monitoring was done in Chitwan National Park under the coordination of Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation and with the support of WWF Nepal and National Trust for Nature Conservation.

Authorities have said that Nepal’s habitat is best for tiger conservation, as tigers look for peaceful and dense jungles. The Nepalese government says it is committed to increasing the tiger population to 250 by 2022, which would be the next Year of the Tiger.

—Rajneesh Bhandari

The 20-year-old “Buddha Boy” of Nepal, who is famous for meditating in the dense forest of Ratanpur village since 2005 and whose followers claim is the reincarnation of the Buddha, beat up more than a dozen villagers last Thursday before locking them in a room.

Ram Bahadur Bomjan told officials that the villagers were smoking cigarettes and disrupting his meditation.

Bara District police superintendent Manoj Neupane said in a phone interview, “Seventeen people have come to us claiming that they were beaten by Bomjan and we are investigating the issue.”

Bomjam, who claims to be in penance (or, meditating), has advocated non-violence and campaigned against the mass sacrifice of animals. Last year, he even addressed the public highlighting non-violence and peace.

Bomjam has claimed that he can mediate for months without eating food. But the 17 villagers, who say they were in the jungle to collect firewood, told police that Bomjam beat them and detained them. Police have sent the injured for medical checks in the nearby Bara Hospital.

The “Buddha Boy” told journalists and police that he slapped the villagers “as a punshiment” for smoking and mimicking him.

–Rajneesh Bhandari

After nearly a month since Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal resigned from his post, Nepal was expecting a new prime minister today.

The government—after missing the deadline to write a new constitution—did nothing specific in the past 21 days except wait for a new government to take over. While millions of Nepalis struggled through the workday with only four hours of electric power, the three major political parties–Maoists, Nepali Congress and CPN UML–were claiming political power. But, none of the three prime ministerial candidates managed to score a simple majority.

One of them looked very familiar. Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal—“Prachanda”—was back a year after being forced to resign as prime minister after an attempt to sack the army chief was revoked by president Ram Baran Yadav.

A candidate needs to get 300 votes in his favor to win, and as none of the parties have majority, the candidates need to find coalition support. The intrigue began in early morning Wednesday, when Maoists decided to support the CPN UML if they got a two-thirds majority in the election.

By the afternoon, CPN-UML’s Jhalanath Khanal—who had joined the race thinking that Prachanda would withdraw—came close to securing the PM post after Maoists and two other parties expressed their conditional support to him. Khanal himself went to meet members of one group, the Front, asking for support. The Front declined, saying that they “will not vote as none of the candidates agreed to fulfill [our] demands.”

In the two different rounds of election organized in the evening, Prachanda scored 242 votes, Nepali Congress’ candidate Ram Chandra Paudel managed 124 votes. Khanal withdrew from the voting process after being unable to secure two-thirds support.

The next election between Prachanda and Paudel will take place on Friday. “I am confident that I will win the election in the second round,” Paudel said. The lights were still on in Constituent Assembly Hall as he exited, but the rest of Kathmandu flickered and went dark.

–Rajneesh Bhandari