Nepal-Prez-India's Support
Nepal's first President-elect Ram Baran Yadav while describing India as a great country, hoped the Himalayan state's giant southern neighbour would support its Constitution-making process.

"Our neighbour India is a great and democratic country, from where we can learn many things and also we expect good wishes and support for our Constitution making-process," the 60-year-old doctor-turned politician told the news agency in an interview in Kathmandu.

Nepali Congress' Indian-origin leader, who was elected to the coveted post in the presidential poll run-off Monday, said passionately that he was "inspired by both Dr Rajendra Prasad and Dr Radhakrishnan, former Presidents of India."
Yadav, who got his medical degree from India, has a picture of Mahatma Gandhi in the living room of his humble two-storey house at Bagdol in Lalitpur district near Kathmandu.

On his election as the first President of Nepal, Yadav said, "Naturally it's a matter of happiness for me to reach at the top most position of the nation."
"But it was not a sudden development, I have been working for the Nepali Congress for the past 28 years and the party has been fighting for democracy for six decades," he said.

"Luckily I had been made the candidate for the post of President and people's representatives voted for me."
Yadav bagged 308 votes in the 594-member Constituent Assembly while his Maoists-backed rival Ram Raja Prasad Singh received 283 votes in the Presidential poll run-off on Monday.

Yadav said the credit for his victory goes to Nepalese people, "who are a source of sovereign power and who are the master."
Yadav said as the President, he would be the custodian of the Constitution and the institutions that fall under it such as the Army, police, bureaucracy and all other organizations.

"Now I have to shoulder a big responsibility such as to establish democracy, take the peace process to a logical conclusion, end the politics of violence and draft a democratic Constitution.

While shouldering these responsibilities, Yadav said, he would "have to be cautious towards maintaining national integrity, national unity and communal harmony."
"Then we have to move the country in the path of socio-political development under the framework of the Constitution after the formation of a new government," Yadav said, adding his role would be of coordinating among 25 political parties having representation in Parliament.

"So, we have to move ahead by forging cooperation and collaboration among all the political parties and at the same time maintaining national unity," he said.

"As our country is home to diverse ethnicities, cultures and religions, I have to coordinate among all of them maintaining a balance between different ethnic groups, classes, communities and religions."
"Whatever caste, creed and religion we belong to, we all are the Nepalese. We have to live together," he said.

Yadav, who visited the famous Pashupatinath temple immediately after winning the election on Monday, said he would also go to Swoyambhunath Stupa, a Buddha shrine in Kathmandu. Yadav said he would visit a mosque too.

Besides, the President-elect said he would go to Ratnapark to pay homage to democratic leader Ganesh Man Singh. END