What are the fundamental differences between parties in the debates in the State Restructuring Committee?
Acharya: The committee has almost completed its concept paper. A technical committee is working on the mapping of provinces; that will be completed in a number of days. Various parties have submitted their proposals and ideas, which we have used as a source of reference. But the committee has not only being working on the basis of these. It has formed ideas based on its own research and study. There are two or three grave differences in the committee: First, we are more or less agreed on the basis on which federal provinces are to be formed: Identity and capacity. Identity consists of ethnicity, community, language, culture, geography and territorial contiguity. Capacity takes into account natural resources, economic relations and administrative ease. But there are disagreements regarding whether or not there should be exemptive rights for ethnicities within provinces. The CPN (Maoist), in particular, is pushing this demand. The others are not agreed to this. They feel that this will p
