IANS
Nepal’s Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has flatly rejected the ethnicity-based federalism in a speech which could irk country’s various ethnic communities.
In a strongly-worded public speech on federalism, a contentious issue of new constitution, the PM said that ethnic ideology has created troubles in many countries and the same mistake should not be repeated in the Nepal.
Addressing a public programme on Friday afternoon, the country’s chief executive said the government cannot go for ethnic federalism, which is a major demand of UCPN (Maoist) and other ethnic groups, while Nepali Congress and CPN-UML were against it.
The dispute among the parties led to the dissolution of constituent assembly in 2012 without delivering a new constitution. This is going to be one of the contentious issues for the drafting of a new constitution. PM Koirala said that promulgation of the new constitution is possible within a year.
Koirala’s party Nepali Congress, which emerged as a largest party from last year’s constituent assembly election, is in favour of multiple identity-based federal structure of the country. The ethnic issue and federal structure are the key issue of federalism in Nepal.
