Nepal, May 28 -- The federal government now appears to be in an inexorable recourse to recentralisation by trampling on the country's nascent federal constitutional edifice. Addressing a public function last week, Prime Minister KP Oli reiterated that provincial and local governments are units under the federal government. The statement only reinforced a similar statement made in Parliament on May 7th while responding to queries of federal lawmakers raised during the debate on the government's policies and programmes. 'The provincial and local governments are under the federal government and federal laws. They are not independent governments,' he had asserted.

Treating both provincial and local governments merely as units of the federal ...