Expressing serious reservations over the demarcation deal, as many as 60 lawmakers from the mid-western region are campaigning in Kathmandu to declare the whole region as single province in the new federal structure. 

During a meeting on Tuesday with heads of four major political parties involved in the constitution writing process, lawmakers Prakash Jwala, Janardan Sharma, Ganesh Man Pun, Daljit Sherpaili, Tek Bahadur Gharti, Anjaja Chaudhary, among others, demanded that the region be made as a separate province instead of dividing the region and Rukum district. 

Besides Prime Minister and Nepali Congress President Sushil Koirala, CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli, UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Maoist leader and Chairman of the Political Dialogue and Consensus Committee Baburam Bhattarai attended the meeting. 

“The decision to divide the mid-western region is unjust. We raised this issue strongly with top leaders of major parties and they responded to us positively,” said Jwala, a UML lawmaker from Salyan. 

After hearing concerns of the disgruntled lawmakers from the region, PM Koirala assured them that the parties would address the concerns raised by the lawmakers and public in the region. “The protest is on in Surkhet and your arguments are also genuine. We will look into this matter while reviewing the demarcation deal later,” PM Koirala said to have told the lawmakers. The lawmakers have also demanded three separate autonomous regions for the Tharu and Magar communities in the mid-western region.

Under the six-state deal, the parties have proposed to divide mid-western region and Rukum district. A part of western Nawalparasi and Baglung district and eastern part of Rukum, together with the districts from Rapti and Lumbini zones and Banke and Bardiya from Bheri zone will form Province 5. The province 6 includes all the districts of Seti, Mahakali and Karnali zones as well as Surkhet, Dailekh and Jajarkot of the Bheri zone and a section of Rukum district. Kailali and Kanchanpur—the two most disputed districts from far-western Tarai—have been included in Province 6. 

Given the failure to announce mid-western region, a section of lawmakers in the region have proposed to include Salyan and remaining part of Rukum into Province 5. They have also expressed readiness to accept Surkhet as a provincial capital should others disapprove Dang. 

Meanwhile, 10 lawmakers representing the mid-western region have registered a memorandum at the PDCC on Tuesday to this effect.