MYAGDI: Locals in Beni Municipality in Myagdi district have warned of social boycott and demanded resignation when a local people’s representatives sought legal recourse against the caste-based discrimination.

Gori Darji, a Dalit woman from Ghatan in ward no 9 of the Municipality has been pressurized to tender her resignation after she spoke out against caste-based discrimination.

Gori had filed a complaint in the District Police Office, Myagdi after her daughter Sabina Darji was not allowed to grind maize in a mill owned by Yogendra Khatri due to untouchability.

Khatri had pledged not to repeat the mistake yet again following which Sabina had recanted her complained a fortnight ago. But the aftermath of the ‘mill incident’ turned out to be harrowing for Gori and her daughter.

Gori was cornered by the locals, and they demanded her resignation after Gori retaliated that she would take legal action against the in-humane treatment against her.

At an interaction programme organized in Beni on Wednesday organized by INSEC, Myagdi, Gori grieved that the role of the people’s representative was dominated by caste-based discrimination.

“I had to put up with insult and threats from the locals after my daughter filed a complaint in the police. The locals demand that I resign from my post,” she bemoaned. “Tensions flared up when I countered their verbal attacks on me by saying that I would take legal recourse against abetting me to resign.”

According to her, the administration squarely suggests her to consider reconciliation whenever she reaches out to the concerned authority for lodging the complaints against caste-based discrimination.

Although the erstwhile government had declared Nepal to be untouchability-free nation on June 4, 2006, the cases of caste-based discrimination continues to come to the fore till date. Gori is one among them.

Nepal issued Caste Based Discrimination and Untouchability (Offence and Punishment( Act-2066 BS (2011) in 2011 and Nepal is a signatory party to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. RSS