By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : Nepal’s Terai plains are reeling under a series of shutdowns while the country’s top leaders are busy jockeying for power in the capital, with just over two months left for the much-awaited election.
An agreement signed between the government and an ethnic group less than a fortnight ago has added fuel to the fire blazing in the plains, resulting in a general strike Sunday.
The pact with the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF), regarded as being mediated by India, resulted in the party splitting, with the dissidents calling it a “sell-out” and enforcing the closure in southern Nepal.
The disruption comes at a time when the Terai, the food bowl of Nepal, has been gasping under an indefinite shutdown since last week.
The Dalit Janajati Party (DJP), who have called the protest, are demanding representation in the November election and reservation for the Dalit community, which is at the bottom of Nepal’s social hierarchy and was once regarded as untouchable.
Besides the DJP, an armed group from the plains, the Madhesi Terai Tigers, have also called an indefinite closure in the plains since Friday to express their anger at not being invited for negotiations by the government that has held talks with MJF.
While Terai burns, its leaders remain locked in party feuds.
The MJF, which was one of the emerging powers in the plains, split.
The Nepal Sadbhavna Party, which is a junior partner in the ruling alliance with a cabinet minister, split after King Gyanendra’s ascension, with one faction supporting the monarch. After the king’s fall last year, the royalist faction decided to bury the hatchet and merge with the opposition group.
However, the united party has now fissured again with one faction supporting Minister for Commerce, Industries and Supplies Rajendra Mahato, and the other, headed by Anandi Devi, the widow of the party’s founder, urging Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala to replace Mahato.
Nepal’s divisive politics is perhaps best evident in Koirala’s own party, the Nepali Congress (NC), which is leading the ruling alliance. In the past, the NC too split with Koirala’s former protégé, deposed premier Sher Bahadur Deuba, leading the dissident Nepali Congress-Democratic (NCD).
With elections round the corner and Maoists taking part in it for the first time, NC and its splinter have been mulling a unification to win the election.
However, despite innumerable talks between Koirala and Deuba, the merger is yet to take place due to chronic differences over power-sharing.