The longstanding dispute regarding the administrative centre of Kalinchok Rural Municipality in Dolakha reached its climax on Sunday night after a group of people barged into the office in Kalinagsthan and moved the office equipment and other belongings to Bandethali.

Scores of people led by Subas Thami, chairman of Ward No. 5, swarmed into the rural municipality’s office and took all the office goods to Bandethali. Bin Kumar Thami, the chairman of the local unit, said that the office goods and belongings were shifted by the people in accordance with the decision of the rural municipality.

“A majority of members of the local body decided to shift its administrative centre to Bandethali from the existing centre, Kalinagsthan. That’s why we moved the office goods. The rural municipal office will be run from Bandethali now onwards,” said Bin Kumar.

The elected people’s representatives have been sharply divided over the issue of the administrative centre of the local unit for the past eight months. Chairman Bin Kumar and some other representatives were in favour of shifting the office to Bandethali while deputy chairperson Kalika Pathak and others were adamant to retain the administrative centre in Kalinagsthan. Both Bin Kumar and Kalika were elected from the then CPN-UML during the 2017 local elections.

Bin Kumar agrees the rural municipality office should have been shifted to Bandethali after due legal processes. “We were compelled to shift the office at night, as the authorities did not support to implement the decision made by the people’s representatives. We had the majority on our side.”

Kalika, however, denied Bin Kumar’s claim of shifting the office. “Seven doors were broken. Important documents including that from the Accounts department were stolen. How can we call it the “shifting the office”? It is burglary,” she asserted.

The day-to-day administrative as well as development works had been greatly affected due to the protracted dispute. Recently, the people’s representatives had decided to put the dispute over the administrative centre on hold to concentrate on development activities.