“The proposed commission cannot be above the CA committee. We don´t have any objection to setting up such a commission, but it doesn´t have any relevance, either,” said Dr Bhattarai at a function in the capital. The High Level Political Mechanism is mulling formation of such a commission. [break]
Maoist Vice-Chairman Bhattarai claimed that supporters of a unitary state are making various excuses against turning the country into a federal one, and the proposal for a state restructuring commission is one of them. “We had also formed a state restructuring commission, but they did not let it take a full shape,” he said. The Maoist vice-chairman argued that such a commission would have advisory roles only and cannot overturn the decision of the CA committee.
The Maoist vice-chairman also said that the basis of federalism in Nepal will be the liberation of ethnic and regional liberation. He argued that the Maoists proposed the federal model on the basis of “nationality”, not ethnicity. He, however, did not elaborate it further.
Jointly pushed by Maoist and UML lawmakers, the CA committee on state restructuring has passed a federal map of 14 provinces, most of which are based on ethnicity. Other political parties, including the Nepali Congress, have opposed the ethnicity-based federalism.
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