Kathmandu, January 9:

Indigenous leaders today urged all indigenous groups to unite to ensure their rights in the new constitution since the political parties were not serious on the problems of the indigenous people.

Ram Bahadur Thapa, Constituent Assembly (CA) member and general secretary of Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities, urged all the indigenous people to pressurise the CA members to draft a constitution which would ensure their rights.

Addressing a programme here today, the leader of the indigenous nationalities said that it was a good opportunity for the people to forward their suggestions to the CA members to draft a constitution which would ensure rights of all the marginalised people in the society.

Bal Krishna Man-uhang, project manager of the National Coalition against Racial Discrimination said that the indigenous people should struggle for more than 25 years to get their equal share of rights as the so-called higher castes.

He even said that the indigenous members of the CA themselves were not really concerned on the problems of the indigenous people.