Madhesi Leaders Demand Self-rule for Madhes THT Online Kathmandu, January 6 Senior Madhesi leaders, including the ministers, said today that the Madhesi people wanted to rule in their land they have been living for centuries. They said that the centralised-state did not listen to “silent cry” of the Madhesis, who have been raising their voices for “identity and national recognition” within the state. Addressing a talk programme at the Reporters' Club, Minister for Agriculture and Cooperatives and senior Nepali Congress leader Mahantha Thakur said the Madhesis did not demand anything but a “self-rule” in their own “home”. “Let us go to the Madhesh and listen to what they have to say, and, then we can address their problems,” Minister Thakur said, adding that the attention of the state had been drawn to the concerns of the Madhesis after they started a “violent cry”. “We, the people of Madhes do not want anything but the right to self-governance in our own land, a land of Hindus and Buddhist world views,” he said. He also added that there was no military solution to genuine demands raised by the people treated as the second-class citizens within the country. Minister for Industry, Commerce and Supplies and general secretary of the Nepal Sadbhavana Party (Anandi Devi) Hridayesh Tripathi said the people across the country took to the streets during the second Jana Andolan to restructure the centralised state. Tripathi said there should be a “meaningful election system” for a “meaningful constituent assembly”. Delimitations of the 205 constituencies must be done in accordance with the distribution of the population of cultural and geographical similarities; the state must be restructured into federalism, which should also have the rights to control on land management, among others. He lamented that the interim constitution, signed by eight-party leaders, did not mention anything about “federalism”. Tripathi warned that constituent assembly would be meaningless if its election was held without restructuring the election system. “What we believe is that the constituent assembly must be able to address even the possibility of armed insurgency in the future,” he said, adding that a clear definition should be made about the meaning of “scientific land reforms”. Jitendra Dev, a leader of the CPN-UML, said the Madhesi movement was associated with their “identity” and “recognition”. He said the Madhesis have been suffering from racial discrimination of the state since the country's unification. He said it was the late King Mahendra who “injected” anti-Madhesi sentiments in the mindset of the people of hill origin and cemented a feeling that the Madhesis were migrant people. He said rights to development, rights to regional autonomy and a system of proportional representation based on population distribution are the major issues the Madhesis have been raising for a long time. chana chatpate ko pani dadagiri khanu parne jasto cha.bihar ma ta garcha dada giri aba nepal ma pani