Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli convened an all-party meeting on Saturday to gather inputs on the pressing issues facing the country. He wanted to hear out other parties, including the opposition, on the Madhes crisis, reconstruction, constitution implementation and budget. Though most parties rightly offered a critical take on the government’s failure on all these issues of national importance, very little was proposed in the way of a solution.

The government has bungled reconstruction and the constitution’s implementation. While some efforts have been made on expediting reconstruction, the government has spared very little thought on winning over the agitating parties on the constitution front. Even three months after the end of the border blockade, no negotiation has taken place with the Madhesi parties. Not surprisingly, they boycotted the all-party meeting—suspecting it to be another public relations stunt.

The agitating parties have serious misgivings about the government’s approach. They believe that the government’s reluctance to reshuffle the political mechanism led by Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa is part of a ploy to wear the protestors out. The government formed the Thapa-led panel before Prime Minister Oli’s visit to India on February 19 to hammer out differences over federal demarcation within three months. With the Madhesis disowning the panel, the very mechanism created to find a resolution on provincial demarcation has since been sitting idle.

Even the main opposition party, the Nepali Congress, has voiced concern over the composition of the Thapa-led panel and has refused to send its member to the mechanism. Obviously the acceptability of the panel has been challenged from the outset. Yet for three precious months, nothing has been done to accommodate the views of the dissenting parties. This has sent a wrong signal that the government is not serious about finding a negotiated settlement to the Madhes issue.

It is clear that without reshuffling the Thapa-led panel, no further negotiations would take place. On the other hand, this impasse is forcing the Madhesi parties to broaden their alliance to launch another protest in the hope of getting the government’s attention.

In the past, the Madhes-based parties had insisted that they would take part in the mechanism only if the government agreed on a framework of state demarcation, or at least two provinces in the Tarai, while making the panel’s recommendations binding. They had also sought statutory status to the mechanism for its broader legitimacy.

Now they have indicated that they could join the mechanism if top leaders from the three major parties become part of it. This is not asking for too much.

The onus therefore lies on the prime minister and major party leaders to assure the Madhesi parties that negotiations on boundary demarcation will not become another Sisyphean exercise. The best way to do that is by actively participating in the boundary panel themselves rather than leaving it to deputies.