Chief Ministers submit 17-point memorandum to federal government

POKHARA: Chief Ministers of six provinces have drawn the attention of the federal governments toward legal ambiguities that are affecting the smooth functioning of the province government.

Chief Minister of Gandaki Province Government, Surendra Raj Pandey, presented a 17-point memorandum to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Friday.

Chief ministers and province chief secretaries from six provinces participated in the conference. However, the Chief Minister of Koshi Province, Hikmat Kumar Karki, did not attend as he was scheduled to undergo a floor test on Friday.

In addition to Pandey, Rajkumar Sharma of Karnali, Shalikram Jamma Kattel of Bagmati, Saroj Kumar Yadav of Madhesh, Dilli Bahadur Chaudhary of Lumbini, and Kamal Bahadur Shah of Sudurpaschim signed the declaration.

The chief ministers have urged the federal government to take various actions, including the formation of provincial police forces, the enactment of the Civil Service Act, the transfer of ownership of government buildings in provinces to provincial governments, the transfer of staff to provinces only after obtaining consent from the provincial governments, allowing provincial governments to correspond with relevant federal ministries, and expediting the enactment of laws to be made by the federal government.

Likewise, they have requested the federal government to amend the land acquisition act to empower provinces to acquire land, permit province governments to establish standards for the extraction of river materials, authorize province governments to use software related to driving licenses and motor vehicle registrations, increase the equalization grant for provinces, provide conditional grants only for projects proposed by provincial and local governments, allocate fines collected by traffic police to provinces, and empower provincial governments to license the branding and production of liquor using locally available raw materials, among other requests.