The UML had formed a state restructuring committee under party leader Ram Chandra Jha to prepare a proposal for the federal set up of the country. The committee had presented two proposals -- one comprising 13 provinces and another 15 -- and the Standing Committee meeting on Tuesday decided to go for 15 provinces.
"The Standing Committee meeting today decided to propose 15 provinces. We shall fine-tune the proposal, make a revision of the map and present it to the Constituent Assembly Committee on State Restructuring in a couple of days," said UML leader Mangal Siddhi Manandhar, who is also a member of the party´s state restructuring committee.
According to him, the party decided to propose 15 provinces mainly on the basis of historic continuity, economic viability and population density, and to delineate them on the basis of language, ethnicity, culture and the oppression the people have faced for centuries.
He said that there would be special, autonomous and protected zones within the provinces for ethnic and oppressed groups, but added that the number of such zones would be decided later.
The provinces proposed by the party include: Birat, Limbuwan, Kirat, Mithila, Bhojpura, Sunkoshi, Tamsaling, Newa, Tamuwan, Magarat, Gandaki, Khaptad, Karnali, Tharuhat and Lumbini.
Manandhar claimed the proposal is different from that of the Maoists in that the UML party has taken into consideration various factors including human, geographic and historical.
The UCPN (Maoist), the only party to have presented its federal model to the CA Committee on State Restructuring, has proposed 13 provinces - three based on region and others on ethnicity - and over 50 protected zones with separate provinces for different ethnicities. The proposal has drawn widespread criticism for basing the provinces mostly on ethnicity.
Similarly, the Madhesi People´s Rights Forum (MPRF) has decided to propose ´one Madhes one province´ comprising 20 districts in the southern plains. According to MPRF co-chair JP Gupta, the party will present its proposal in a few days.
The Nepali Congress has formed a state restructuring committee led by Gopal Man Shrestha, who presented his proposal to the party Central Committee (CC) meeting last month. He was supposed to complete the task a week later after including feedback from the CC members, but he is yet to accomplish it. He told the CA Committee on State Restructuring on Monday that he would complete the task only after the Dasain festival.
The deadline set by the CA committee for the political parties to present their proposals is expiring for the third time on Wednesday, but political parties other than the UCPN (Maoist) are yet to carry out their task.
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