A marathon meeting of top leaders of the four major political parties remained undecided what to do about the term 'secularism' in the preamble of the new statute as there has been demands from a huge section of the Hindu population to remove that term and substitute it with 'Hindu state'. Although the major parties have reached an understanding not to mention 'Hindu state' in the preamble, they are at odds whether to replace the term secularism with some other neutral term or avoid it altogether.
NC leader Ramesh Lekhak said there have been proposals either to replace the term secularism with some other term or avoid any mention of secularism at all since there is already a separate right to religion under the fundamental rights of citizens. "Discussions are still underway how this issue can be settled without hurting the sentiments of any group," he said.
The major parties have reached an understanding on the 'or' provision instead of 'and' as between father and mother for a child's citizenship certificate. "Although there has been agreement to replace and with or, this essentially does not make any difference given the sub-clause [that requires that a child will get citizenship through descent from father or mother only if both the parents are Nepali citizens]," said UCPN (Maoist) Vice Chairman Narayan Kaji Shrestha, who was involved in the negotiations.
Shrestha said a new provision has been added to ensure that a foreign male marrying a Nepali national gets naturalized citizenship after 15 years as this was missing in the draft statute.
Likewise, the major parties have not been able to settle the threshold provision making it mandatory for a party to secure seats in parliament under proportional representation. Sources said the parties have reached an understanding that they will settle this issue after settling all the other issues of contention in the new statute.
However, the political parties have reached an agreement to include both the chief secretary and the chief of army staff in the National Security Council (NSC). The army had expressed serious reservations over provisions in the draft statute that excluded its representation from the NSC.
The major parties have also agreed to retain 'total press freedom', adopt a multi-lingual policy and include the reproductive rights of women in the new statute. Likewise, they have included a provision to ensure that the president and vice president are of different genders or ethnic groups, and a provision to pick the ward chairmen of VDCs and municipalities through direct elections. The term federalism has been added in the new statute n the preamble itself.
Among other things, the major parties have reached an understanding on having autonomous, protected and special regions within each province as deemed necessary. While an autonomous region will be declared in a region where there is a large community of one particular ethnic group, a protected region will be declared in an area where a certain ethnic community is on the verge of extinction.
The areas which are lagging far behind in terms of development will be included under special zones to ensure balanced development in the country. "We have reached an understanding to have a Financial Commission. This commission will prepare criteria for allocating revenue generated through resources that are under the control of the federal government, such as customs, royalties and other sources of revenue," said Shrestha.
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