Top leaders of the Nepali Congress (NC), CPN-UML, UCPN (Maoist) and Madhesi People's Rights Forum-Democratic (MPRF-D) had claimed on Wednesday to have settled most of the issues and said they would sign the deal Thursday itself."Most of the issues have been resolved. However, we are yet to finalize the deal on demarcation of the provinces," Chairman of CA's Constitutional Political Dialogue and Consensus Committee, Baburam Bhattarai, told reporters while emerging from interparty negotiations at Singha Durbar, Thursday evening.
He later tweeted, "Though negotiations from 7 am to 9 pm today didn't seem to be productive in surface, it has infact become result-oriented."
The leaders on Wednesday claimed that they would sign the deal, table their agreement at the CPDCC meeting and forward it to the CA plenary later the same day.
But this couldn't materialize as the same leaders supported campaigns launched by their respective electorates against dividing up their respective districts or regions.
Former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, Purna Bahadur Khadka and Ramesh Lekhak from NC and Bhim Bahadur Rawal of UML, among others, strongly opposed the proposal to include Kailali in the tarai province and have been insisting that the entire Far-Western Region should be left intact as per their campaign for an Akhanda Sudur Paschim (undivided far-west).
Some of the leaders have suggested a middle way solution, dividing up Kailali and including part of the district in the far-western province and the other part in the southern province.
Leaders of the major political parties from the mid-western districts have opposed any division of Rapti Zone, while leaders from Lumbini Zone have demanded that that zone also be left intact in the federal system.
NC Vice-president Ram Chandra Paudel is for giving the province covering the western hill districts some access to the India border somewhere in Nawalparasi district.
MPRF-D Chairman Bijay Gachchhadar has been consistently lobbying for including Saptari district in the province comprising the eastern hill and tarai districts.
UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli and NC General Secretary Krishna Sitaula have taken a firm stance for including Jhapa, Morang and Sunsari districts in the eastern hills province.
The interparty negotiations couldn't even continue for long as Gachchhadar left the meeting in the middle and headed for Biratnagar, his hometown.
"The chairman went there to consult and discuss with local representatives on the demarcation issue," said MPRF-D Vice-chair Jitendra Dev.
Leaders said Gachchhadar has of late tabled another proposal to delineate three provinces in the tarai. He proposes to delineate a tarai province from Morang to Siraha and another province from Mahottarai to Parsa. Likewise, as per his plan, another tarai province would stretch from Nawalparasi to Kailali.
But NC and UML leaders are against this.
The leaders are now claiming that they will resolve the issues on Friday.
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