Nepal to hold November polls despite threat: minister

Nepal will push ahead with long-awaited national elections in November, a government minister said today, despite an opposition threat to disrupt the polls after a breakdown in crucial cross-party talks.
Nepal announced in June elections would be held on November 19, raising hopes of stability in the deeply divided Himalayan nation, but also scepticism about the scheduled timeline amid fears of an opposition boycott.
The leaders of four major political parties have since held a series of meetings in an attempt to bring all factions on board, in what would be only the second national polls since the end of a civil war in 2006.

Health Minister Bidhyadhar Mallik said the talks have now broken down, and instead the four parties that support the government will seek changes to electoral laws to allow the polls to proceed.
Mallik said the parties were also seeking a 10-day extension of the deadline for parties to register for the elections in the hope the opposition would join, and he was confident the vote would go ahead.
"We have forwarded a proposal to the president for the amendment of the interim constitution," Mallik told AFP.

"It consists of some changes on electoral laws. This will remove the hurdles on the way to holding elections. We are sure that the elections will be held as per the schedule."

However, a breakaway Maoist faction warned today of disruption, following failure in the recent talks to meet its demands that include postponing the elections until next spring.
"We will not only boycott the elections, but will also disrupt it," a leader of the opposition Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, C P Gajurel, told reporters in Kathmandu.
Nepal installed a caretaker government in March tasked with steering the country towards elections, and Chief Justice Khilraj Regmi was chosen as part of a cross-party agreement to head the interim administration.
Regmi said yesterday he would refuse to quit his judicial post while heading the government -- another key demand of the hardline Maoist group.

Nepalese politics has operated in a legislative vacuum since May 2012 when the parliament, which had doubled as a constitution- drafting body, was dissolved without producing the charter.
Political infighting, which included a split in the ruling Maoist party last year, has confounded efforts to implement a peace plan meant to rebuild the country after its 10-year civil war.
Nepal's civil war pitting Maoist rebels against government forces claimed more than 16,000 lives and 1,000 people remain missing.
The Constituent Assembly, or parliament, was elected in 2008 after the Maoists gave up their arms.
More than 100 parties are expected to take part in the November elections in which half of Nepal's 26 million people are eligible to vote.