Officials at the Local Level Restructuring Commission have said they will not accept the government’s decision to amend the terms of reference asking it to take area clusters (Ilakas) into account while fixing the number of local bodies.

Although the government can revise the ToR, they claimed it is not authorised to fix the number of local units. As a middle approach to settling the existing differences over the number of local units, three major parties on Sunday had decided to take the 927 Ilakas as reference. The decision was approved by the Cabinet on Tuesday.

The Nepali Congress, the largest party in Parliament, had demanded increasing

the number of local units to 1,000 against the 565 fixed

by the LLRC. Currently there are 217 municipalities and 3,117 Village Development Committees.

“Taking Ilakas as the

major basis for delineating local bodies is not acceptable,” said Sunil Ranjan Singh, a member of the commission. The government has informed the commission about its

decision. Singh said a meeting on Thursday would take

a decision on the ToR

amendment. He said he

would object to the decision even if other commissioners accepted it.

The agitating Madhesi parties and the Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal have also spoken against the government’s decision.

The dispute over the number of local units has held the district level technical committees from submitting their reports even as their deadline has already expired. The commission had asked all the technical committees to submit their reports by mid-September but only 52 have completed their task.