While Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was assuring Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Thursday afternoon that there would be efforts to amend the constitution in future, the agitating Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal announced in Kathmandu to contest all the upcoming elections.

The newly formed force of six Madhes-based parties had been refusing to participate in the elections before amendments to the constitution to address its concerns.

Organising a press conference at the Babarmahal-based party office, RJP-N leaders hoped that they would register a strong victory in all the polls since 64 percent lawmakers had accepted, as showed by the parliamentary vote, that there were serious flaws in the constitution.

“Though the parties argued that the constitution was promulgated with the votes of 90 percent lawmakers, 64 percent of them have agreed that the constitution needs to be amendment to correct its flaws,” the party said in a statement on Thursday.

The RJP-N listed out six achievements of its stance to boycott the two phases of local level elections when many questioned the RJP-N leadership why the party had to join the third phase of polls.

The party said the government was forced to declare all those who died during the Madhes movement as martyrs, provide life-long financial support to those disabled in clashes, withdraw most of the cases filed against Madhesi leaders and cadres, refund the damages following the Tikapur incident, increase the number of local federal units, and put the constitution amendment proposal to a vote in Parliament.

Eight leaders would be sent to the eight districts of Province 2 to select candidates for the local level polls.

The party also decided to choose “cycle” as its electoral symbol as the Election Commission failed to provide “umbrella” that it demanded citing technical and legal problems. However, the RJP-N has demanded that the other five symbols, used by the constituent parties earlier, be deleted from ballot papers so as not to confuse voters.