SATURDAY'S LAST UPDATE ON BHATTARAI DEATH

LAST UPDATE ON BHATTARAI’S DEATH BEFORE LOAD-SHEDDNG AT 8PM

Kathmandu, 5 March: An emergency meeting of the cabinet Saturday also decided to flag at half-staff for three days from Sunday to mourn Krishna Prasad Bhattarai’s death.
Prime Minister Jhalanath Khanal will drape Bhattarai’s body with the national flag at Dashrath Rangashalal Sunday.
The funral procession will start at two in the afternoon from the stadium meandering the streets of the capital to Aryaghat.
Senior leader Bishwabandhu Thapa revealed Saturday Bhattarai was the “automatic choice’ of King Birendra for prime minister when Ganesh Man Singh rejected the offer, but Girija Prasad Koirala objected the king’s decision.
In a 1999 election Bhattarai won parliamentary elections for the first time after two defeats in 1959 and 1991.
Thapa said,” He [Bhattarai] was joking when he said he would live to be 100 years old.”
Bhattarai was witty.
A government secretary and a minister in the 1990 Bhattarai government preferring anonymity revealed to your blogger Kishunji could never concentrate on a subject for more than five minutes—yet he proclaimed a constitution and held parliamentary elections in one year.
A bachelor, Amita Kapali was Bhattarai’s caretaker for two decades until his dying day.
Television footage showed her wheeling Bhattarai’s body out of hospital where he died and she received visitors Saturday at the ashram provided by the government for the former prime minister.
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