While the federal government is in the final leg of preparing the national budget for the next fiscal year, the government of Sudurpaschim Province is putting pressure on Kathmandu to increase the federal grant going to the province.

A committee led by Sudurpaschim Chief Minister Kamal Shah met Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Finance Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat and the Vice-chairperson of the National Planning Commission Min Bahadur Shrestha, demanding that the province be given more federal grant. Shah was accompanied by provincial assembly Speaker Bhim Bhandari, and Rajendra Singh Rawal, former chief minister and the leader of the opposition, among others.

“Sudurpaschim ranks lowest among Nepal’s provinces in the Human Development Index, the poverty rate is very high and it lags far behind other provinces in terms of infrastructure development,” Rawal told the Post. “So it would be unfair to allocate federal grants to Sudurpaschim in the same proportion as other provinces. The provinces that are better off in terms of development should get less. We have put forth our demands with the authorities concerned.”

The Shah-led committee complained that the federal government was least bothered about the problems facing the Sudurpaschim province. Rawal said they have clearly told the federal government that all the provinces need to be strong in order to strengthen federalism.

Not just Sudurpaschim, other provinces too are not satisfied with the federal government’s attitude towards them. Though it has been more than seven years since federalism was institutionalised with the promulgation of the Constitution of Nepal, the federal government is yet to prepare crucial laws like Federal Civil Service Act and Federal Education Act. Similarly, they are also dissatisfied with the distribution of revenues raised from different sources.

In order to build a common position on issues, the chief ministers of the seven provinces were scheduled to have a meeting on Wednesday in Pokhara. The meeting was cancelled at Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s behest. “As far as I know, Prime Minister Dahal didn’t want the meeting,” said Rawal. In fact, Dahal was supposed to inaugurate the meeting.

Experts on federal affairs argue that there are different mechanisms in place to resolve such disputes. However, the meetings of such mechanisms are seldom held.

The Federal, Provincial and Local Level (Coordination and Interrelationships) Act envisions five different mechanisms for institutionalising the relationship between the different tiers of governments and resolving differences, if there are any. It envisions an Interprovincial Council, an Intergovernmental Fiscal Council, a Provincial Coordination Council, a National Coordination Committee and a Sectoral Committee.

The Interprovincial Council, which has the most important role in resolving disputes between the federal and provincial governments or between different provincial governments, hasn’t been active. The prime minister-led council with the finance minister, home minister and the chief ministers of the provinces as its members, has held its meeting just three times so far.

The last meeting was held in April 2019 when CPN-UML chair KP Sharma Oli was leading the federal government. “First, the federal government is least interested in holding meetings of such a mechanism. Secondly, the decisions of the meetings are seldom unimplemented,” Khim Lal Devkota, a member of the National Assembly and an expert on federal affairs, told the Post.

The meeting of the Interprovincial Council had endorsed the Federalism Implementation Action Plan, which has identified 84 tasks within 29 thematic areas. However, around half of the decisions are yet to be implemented, according to Devkota. Similar is the case with the Intergovernmental Fiscal Council. For instance, the council in 2019 had decided to resolve the dispute over the utilisation revenue collected from the extraction of sand and stones. However, the decision has yet to be implemented.

“These mechanisms are vital for good coordination among different tiers of government. However, they have been deliberately enfeebled,” Devkota accused. The Nepali Congress and the CPN (Maoist Centre), which blamed the UML for being anti-federal, too have shown no interest in making these mechanisms work. The Sher Bahadur Deuba-led government which replaced Oli’s, didn’t hold the meeting of the Interprovincial Council even once. This is also true of the incumbent Dahal government.

“There is no point in having such mechanisms if you don’t hold their meetings. It’s better to scrap them,” said Devkota.