Chief Minister (CM) of Province 3 Dor Mani Paudel has called the demands of federal lawmakers to get Rs 100 million in the budget anti-federalist and greed to become ward chairman.
“Repeating the constituency development program when we have already implemented federalism, and increasing the amount on top of that, is not in accordance to federalism,” CM Paudel said in an interview to Setopati. “I am strongly against that. It is not the responsibility of federal lawmakers to go to each home and dole out money and development. They should rather fulfill the responsibility for which the people have elected them.”
Federal lawmakers of almost all the parties are putting pressure on Finance Minister Yuba Raj Khatiwada to allocate Rs 100 million for each constituency under the program in the upcoming budget.
“It may have been accepted in the past as there were no provincial and local governments, and they were the only elected representatives. We were a little lenient on that then. But there are two levels of government now. They are active and powerful, and have been institutionalized,” he explained.
He revealed that has met Finance Minister Khatiwada and urged him to not allocate budget for the federal lawmakers. “The constitution has bestowed so much right to the local level. The local level is a government in itself. There is also the provincial government. We take exception to this attempt to play a role remaining above the provincial government,” CM Paudel said.
