Feb 23, Kathmandu- A nationwide election is being held on Chaitra 23 for the central leadership of the Nepal Bar Association, an umbrella organization of 24,000 legal practitioners.

The election of the Central Working Committee of the Nepal Bar Association has already begun among legal professionals. After the election, the current working committee led by Gopal Krishna Ghimire will hand over the leadership to the new working committee that will come after the election.

The current working committee led by Ghimire has been accused of not being able to do much important work during its tenure, not being able to correct the wrong Judicial Council regulations, facing contempt action from the Supreme Court, not being able to play a coordinating role with the leadership of the judiciary, and overall not being able to work in the interest of the legal profession.

Serious complaints have been raised about the lack of proportional representation of legal practitioners in the appointment of judges, the failure to maintain good governance in the judiciary, delays and fraud in work, and the failure of the bar leadership to raise its voice and improve matters.

While in some countries, judges are elected directly after contesting elections, in Nepal, legal practitioners themselves complain that politics has entered the judiciary by making the bar election expensive, showy, and party-based elections, even after judges are eliminated from the bar election.

Sources claim that a grand front of lawyers close to the ruling CPN-UML, CPN-Maoist and CPN-S, Rastriya Swatantra Party and RPP is being prepared to corner the Nepali Congress in the Chaitra 23 election. Candidates were also proposed for candidacy in the grand meeting of the alliance held on Falgun 8.

The candidacy of the Maoist Raman Shrestha and UML Sabita Bhandari Baral and Tikaram Bhattarai has been filed, while the candidacy of the vice-president, general secretary and central members has been decided by all the organizations and discussed in the alliance before moving forward, sources claim.

The UML, which suffered a heavy defeat in the Supreme Court Bar Association election held on Poush 20, won the Nepal Bar Council election by a large margin. If the alliance with the Congress and all other parties in the Nepal Bar are in the same place, the alliance leaders have also claimed that it can win all the seats in the Nepal Bar.

More than 12,000 legal professionals will vote in the Nepal Bar Association elections.