Kathmandu, May 3

The Province 2 government is mulling over moving a proposal in Provincial Assembly in the next 10 days to settle the issues of name and headquarters of the province.

Province 2 Minister of Internal Affairs and Law Gyanendra Yadav told THT over phone from Janakpurdham that the government would take up the issues of name and headquarters with opposition parties before tabling the proposal in the Provincial Assembly.

“We have passed 14 out of 16 bills through consensus and I hope that the government will be able to forge consensus on name and headquarters as well,” Yadav said, adding that the provincial government would still register the proposal in the PA if efforts to forge consensus on the two issues failed.

Recently a dialogue committee formed under chairperson of Province 2 Niti Ayog Haribansha Jha submitted its report to the provincial government, recommending Janakpurdham as the province’s headquarters and Madhes as the province’s name.

Yadav said the Province 2 government would not compromise on the name ‘Madhes’ recommended by Jha-led committee as it represented the sentiment of the Madhes movements in the past.

“There are very few people even within the opposition parties here who are against Madhes as province’s name, but I think the provincial government cannot compromise on the word ‘Madhes’ because it was linked with Madhesi identity,” Yadav added. He said if opposition parties did not agree on the nomenclature, then the government would take the issue to the PA and the legislative body will settle the issue with two-thirds majority.

Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal lawmaker of Province 2 Manish Kumar Suman said the coalition government of the RJP-N and Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal was taking time to settle the issues from the PA mainly because it lacked two-thirds majority in the House. Issues relating to name and headquarters of provinces should be settled by two-thirds votes in the PA.

Lawmaker Suman said almost all political parties held unanimous views in designating Janakpurdham as the headquarters of the province, but the province name was a contentious issue.

Suman was confident that a consensus would be reached on the name of the province soon. The coalition government of the RJP-N and the FSF-N, which commands 54 members (FSF-N 29 and RJPN 25), would need the support of either the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) or the Nepali Congress to get their proposal on name of the province and headquarters endorsed. NCP has 19 members while NC has 32 members in the PA.

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