Kathmandu, February 3

A day after the government formed a task force to seek suggestions on the report of the Local Bodies Restructuring Commission, its office bearers say revision of the report is not possible.

LBRC member Neeraj Sah said LBRC received over 50 phone calls and multiple delegations everyday from across the country seeking changes in the report."The government cannot make selective revisions. If the report is revised it will set a bad precedent and will become a never ending process," said another LBRC member Sunil Ranjan Singh. He said the report was prepared keeping in mind both the geography and the population. He added that neither the government nor any task force had the authority to revise the document and the report could be revised only after its implementation.

"It will be unconstitutional to revise the report," said Singh. Meanwhile, Minister for Federal Affairs and Local Development Hitraj Panday, who is also the head of the government's task force to study the LBRC report, said the task force would study the report thoroughly and recommend its revision, if needed.

Expressing dissatisfaction with its contents, the government has refused to endorse the report saying further consultations were needed on the report among the political parties.

The constitutional body had submitted its report on number and boundaries of local bodies to the government on January 6.

Apart from determining the number and boundaries of local bodies, the LBRC is mandated to prepare a report on the special, protected and autonomous regions, their economic feasibility and structure of the public administration in the federal model by March 13.

LBRC Chair Balananda Paudel said the constitution had given the commission the authority to 'determine' the number and boundaries of municipalities and village councils not just to make recommendations.

Paudel said any argument to curtail powers given by the constitution to the local bodies would be regressive. "Delegation of power to local bodies is never wrong," he said.

Paudel said the commission finalised its report after going through a tedious process. "Even in Province 2, where we could not hold formal discussion at local level, we determined boundaries and number of local bodies based on the suggestions put forth by politicians and lawmakers from the province during informal discussion," he added.

Paudel said LBRC was finding it hard to fix those regions that were situated in two or more districts, as the commission  could not go beyond the boundaries of one district.

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