Kathmandu: Nepal’s embattled Prime Minister K P Oli on Thursday rejected calls by Madhesis to re-write the new Constitution, hours after surviving a threat to his government following a U-turn by Prachanda-led Maoists who decided not to withdraw support to him.
Addressing the Parliament, Oli refuted reports that he was planning to dissolve the House in the wake of possible withdrawal of support to the seven-month-old coalition government by UCPN-Maoist.
“There is no truth in the rumour about dissolving the Parliament. It is totally baseless,” he said. His remarks came hours after the top leaders of the coalition partners met at the residence of the Maoist chief Prachanda and decided not to withdraw support to the government for the time being. It has not been disclosed what type of understanding the Maoists have reached with Oli’s party to change its earlier decision.
A Maoist leader said: “Our party has decided to wait for now given that there are some legal complications in registering the no confidence motion against this government. The coalition will remain intact now.” In his address, 64-year-old Oli also called the main opposition party Nepali Congress and other parties to seek solution to all the problems through parliamentary exercise.
He urged the disgruntled parties to come forward for talks to resolve their issues. The issue related to re-demarcation of the boundary will be decided through a high-level commission and the issue related to inclusiveness of all sections of the society has been addressed through amendment to the Constitution, he said.
Oli, however, rejected the demand made by a section of political groups which are raising the issue of re-writing the new Constitution, apparently referring to Madhesis who are not happy with the statute approved in September.
“There is no provision to re-write the constitution as the constituent assembly has already been transformed into a Parliament, which has no authority to do so.
However, we can amend the Constitution time and again to incorporate grievances of the disgruntled groups,” he said.
He said the government is sensitive towards the demands raised by the Madhesi people and other ethnic groups.
“The remaining grievances could be resolved through dialogue and talks. There is no good alternative to dialogue and agreement. The government wants to resolve all the problems through dialogue,” he said.
Madhesis, mostly of Indian-origin, wants the government to rewrite the Constitution so that the concept of secularism, identity-based proportional inclusive representation and federal democratic republic status to Nepal could be constitutionally ensured.
The Madhesi parties led the six months-long violent agitation, mainly to protest against the seven-province federal model enshrined in the Constitution.
Nearly 60 people lost their lives during the agitation that also disrupted the supplies of petroleum products and cooking gas among other essentials to Nepal, leading to severe hardships to the people. Nepal had blamed India for the disruption of supplies by imposing an unofficial blockade. India repeatedly rejected the allegations.
The agitation, however, ended unexpectedly in February just before Oli’s maiden visit to India without any political agreement.
Oli in today’s speech claimed that his India visit not only succeeded in normalising relations and ended border blockade, but also helped in improving ties.
He said that the government will now pay attention towards post-reconstruction works. Oli urged all political parties to move forward unitedly to speed up post-earthquake reconstruction works, to implement the Constitution and uplift the economy of the country, which suffered due to the earthquake. (PTI)
