Kathmandu, October 2:

The government today formed a task force under the leadership of Janak Raj Joshi, secretary at the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction, to deal with the demands raised by the National Badi Rights Struggle Committee (NBRSC).

The committee has been staging several protest programmes for the past 47 days.The task force was formed after talks held between the government team and the NBRSC this afternoon.

“We could not work to address the demands raised by the Badi community because we were too busy in national politics,” a member of the Badi talks team, Binod Pahadi, quoted Minister for Peace and Reconstruction Ram Chandra Poudel as saying during the meeting. State Minister for Water Resources Gyanendra Karki and State Minister for General Administration Ram Chandra Yadav were present during the meeting.

The task force includes secretaries of the five ministries concerned including Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, Ministry of Education and Sports, Ministry of Health and Population and Ministry of Land Reforms and Management in addition to five representatives from the Badi community and two from the Dalit Nagarik Andolan.

The task force would meet to discuss short and long-term demands raised by the Badi community and plan on how they can be fulfilled and let the minister-level meeting finalise the plan.

However, president of NBRC, Uma Devi Badi, maintained they would not stop their struggle until they received the paper of the government’s decision to fulfil all the demands. She said the struggle programme for tomorrow has been postponed as the NBRC has been concentrating on the meeting of the task force.