New Delhi/Kathmandu: India yesterday named Ranjit Rae, an Indian Foreign Service officer from the 1980 batch, as the next ambassador to Nepal. He will succeed Jayanta Prasad, whose tenure ends in August.
Rae, 56, is expected to take up his assignment shortly, an announcement said. He is currently the Indian ambassador in Vietnam.
Rae is one of the architects of the 12-point agreement signed in 2005 in New Delhi between the then seven-party alliance and the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist that led to the peace process in the Himalayan country.
Chandy receives UN award
Manama/Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy received the United Nations Global Award for Public Service at a glittering ceremony held in the Bahraini capital yesterday.
The award was presented to him by UN Under Secretary General Wu Hongbo for his mass contact programme. Chandy was chosen from entries from 50 Asia-Pacific countries.
Through his mass contact programme, which he has conducted twice after becoming chief minister (in 2004 and 2011), Chandy went to each of the 14 districts in the state and received petitions from people, standing for more than 19 hours and leaving only after seeing the last petitioner.
Kinnaur sees 54 percent polling
Shimla: Polling for the second and last phase of the Mandi Lok Sabha by-election in Himachal Pradesh’s rain-hit Kinnaur district yesterday saw 54 percent voter turnout.
No untoward incident was reported except at the Shalkhar polling booth, where minor skirmishes were reported, Chief Electoral Officer Narender Chauhan said.
The main contestants are Congress’s Pratibha Singh, wife of Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, and Bharatiya Janata Party legislator and former cabinet minister Jai Ram Thakur.
IANS
