The little-known armed outfit operating in Tarai agreed to stop all its armed and provocative activities to create an atmosphere for talks. As reciprocity, the government talks team led by Peace and Reconstruction Minister Janardan Sharma assured of safety of the MVKP talks team members during the dialogue and treat them politically.
"We have assured the talks team members of security during the talks and while reaching safe destination," said Sharma. "The talks was held in very cordial atmosphere and they have agreed that process of change in Nepal is possible through formulation of a pro-people constitution."
The outfit’s leader Jaya Prakash Yadav told the reporters after the dialogue that his team has taken the talks positively and hopes to get positive response from the government on his group’s demands.
Yadav said he has taken a courageous decision to sit for talks to ensure participation of rebel Tarai groups in constitution-making process. “We believe that we can achieve what we have desired through the ongoing process of change in new circumstances in the country through formulation of a new constitution,” said Yadav.
The group does not hold much significance compared to some other armed outfits in the Tarai.
Despite the demand for a single Madhes province, Yadav said his group is firm to safeguard Nepal’s territorial integrity. He said his group was ready to discuss whether to accept or not the decision of Constituent Assembly (CA) on future state structure.
Government team member, Local Development Minister Ram Chandra Jha said the government would categorize the demands put forward by MVKP leaders into three groups and deal with them through Constituent Assembly, government itself or its administrative machinery. “They (MVKP leaders) have come up with firm commitment to safeguard the country’s integrity and agreed to address the problems through ongoing process of peace and democracy,” Jha said.
In a joint statement issued at the end of the talks, Sharma and Yadav have agreed to set a date for another talks after categorizing which of the demands are addressed by the government and which of them need to be forwarded to the CA.
Both the sides, however, did not delve much on the demands presented by the group. Most of the demands are related with ending socio-economic discrimination in Madhes.
Besides Madhes as single province, the MVKP has demanded that the government declare its deceased cadres as martyrs, compensate them and withdraw cases against their cadres. Most interestingly, the party has demanded that its militants be integrated into the state army or other security agencies.
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