Facing mounting pressure for its leadership’s half-hearted stance against ethnicity-based federalism, the Nepali Congress has proposed to handover the responsibility to name federal states to the provincial assembly.

A meeting of the second largest party in the Constituent Assembly (CA) took a decision to this effect today at a time when political parties are divided over the issue of whether to consider ethnicity as the sole basis while federating the country or consider “economic viability” for the same.

The meeting called to come up with an official viewpoint of the NC on federalism – one of the most disputed issues of constitution drafting – also saw NC leaders becoming flexible to create 11 states from the earlier rigid stance for eight.

NC President Sushil Koirala, Vice President Ram Chandra Poudel, among other senior party leaders, were present at the meeting.

While UCPN (Maoist) party is in favor of 14-state model (ethnicity based federalism) prepared by the State Restructuring Commission (SRC) and CPN (UML) has presented the new proposal to federate the country into 12 states in the new constitution upholding both ethnicity identity and viability, the NC leadership has been seen firmly against ethnicity based federalism of late. Nepalnews.com