'If not contained, Nepal crisis may spill over to India'

A Nepalese delegation, comprising members of the civil society and the Madhesi community, has rejected the constitutional amendments passed by their Parliament, saying it was done without taking them into confidence.
The group said the Madhesis agitation over the constitutional amendment has been going on for the past six months and if there is no early resolution to the issue, then the crisis might "spill over to India" as well.
The delegation said that instead of strengthening the economically weaker section, the amendment has included in the category the Khas Aryas, which has been a "ruling class".
"The amendment to the Constitution has not been able to solve the problem. The amendment was done by the Lower House keeping population as the main criterion and giving geography the second priority. But this has been cleverly done by demarcating the boundaries that suit the hill class and the Khas Aryas.

"Of the Madhesis provinces, only one can have Madhesis Chief Minister if one looks at the demography," Dipendra Jha, a lawyer at Nepal's Supreme Court, told reporters here.
He said the amendment has also not addressed the problem of the Upper House.

"There are 55 districts in the hills and only 20 in the Terai. If you look at the population, some 70 per cent of the population is in the plains. Now, for Upper House, every district is supposed to send 8 MPs. So, even in this case Terai region will go under represented.
"It is like treating Uttar Pradesh and Sikkim at par while giving representation in the Rajya Sabha," said Vijay Karna, a professor at Tribhuvan University and former Nepalese Ambassador to Denmark.

The agitating Madhesis last week rejected a constitutional amendment passed by the Nepalese Parliament to resolve the ongoing political crisis and blockade of key trade border points with India, calling it "incomplete" as it did not address their concerns over redrawing federal boundaries.
Madhesis, who are inhabitants of the Terai region, are opposed to the new Constitution that divides their ancestral homeland under the seven-province structure and have led an ongoing blockade of key border trade points with India.
The agitating community that shares strong cultural and family bonds with India is demanding demarcation of provinces, fixing of electoral constituencies on the basis of population and proportional representation, and have launched a protest for months that has claimed at least 55 lives.