August 6: The Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) has formed a six-member committee to prepare a new modality for the upcoming election. A virtual meeting of the executive committee of FNCCI on Wednesday (August 5) decided to prepare a new modality within 15 days to hold the election amid risk of coronavirus pandemic.

The committee includes executive members of FNCCI Ranjit Acharya, Bharat Acharya, Sunil Gopal Shrestha, Arun Sumargi, Binod Dhakal and DB Basnet.

The committee has been mandated to prepare a modality to hold the election of FNCCI amid coronavirus pandemic. The committee will hold discussions with experts on whether to hold election through electronic means or to go ahead with regular election process by maintaining physical distance between the voters. FNCCI can either opt for electronic voting or get permission from the government to hold direct election, informed FNCCI executive committee member Krishna Prasad Dulal.

FNCCI was supposed to hold its 45^th general convention on April 10-11 and hand over the responsibility of the federation to Senior Vice President Shekhar Golchha. But that has been put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. FNCCI had decided to postpone the general convention in mid-March considering the risk of coronavirus. The government then imposed a lockdown on March 24, following which the election became uncertain.

An executive committee meeting of FNCCI last month decided to hold the general convention on August 10-11. Although the government lifted the lockdown on July 23, it has not lifted ban on mass gathering.