Kathmandu January 22

After administering oath of office and secrecy to members of provincial assemblies, the newly appointed governors are pondering their next move. But lack of sufficient legal and administrative knowledge and insufficient human resources and infrastructure has only added to the uncertainty.

Governor of Province 1 Govinda Subba returned to Kathmandu from Biratnagar yesterday to consult legal and administrative experts. He is not sure when he will return to Biratnagar. He has yet to call the first meeting of the provincial assembly. “I need to learn legal and administrative nitty-gritty of the job,” Subba told THT.

As per Article 183 of the constitution, governors have to summon the provincial assembly session within 20 days of the announcement of final result of the PA election. Only Province 2 governor has called the first meeting of the PA on February 4.

Province 2 Governor Ratneshwar Lal Kayastha told THT, “We are all at the learning stage and environment should be created for us to learn.”

According to him, formation of the government in Province 2 could take some time, as no party has won clear majority. The Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal and the Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal are in a position to form a coalition government but they have not sealed a deal yet. He said 25 civil servants would be needed for his office, but he had asked the federal government to send only 13, as there was no space for 25 employees in his office.

According to Kunwar, the problems of infrastructure could have been resolved had the government converted regional offices to governors’ offices.

“We have adopted federal structure but we still have unitary mindset. We should scrap the regional offices,” Kunwar added.

Province 4 Governor Baburam Kunwar said the local administration had been working on war footing to establish provincial offices. He added that he was consulting members of the Parliament with legal background and would try to call the first PA meeting in January itself.

Province 7 Governor Mohan Raj Malla told THT that they did not even have a provincial secretariat. “Paper work for calling the first meeting of the PA should be prepared by the secretariat but we do not have a secretariat yet,” he told THT. He said he might call the first meeting of the PA on February 4. He added that the PA secretariat would be set up within a week of Kathmandu-based civil servants’ arrival in Dhangadi.

The Election Commission had announced results of provincial polls held under proportional representation system on January 17.