Jan 17, Kathmandu -Voting is taking place today for the permanent capital and naming of Province- 2. The state assembly will convene at 11 a.m. to decide on the capital and name proposals.

A parliamentary committee convened by Speaker Saroj Yadav to decide on the names and capitals has submitted four names for states and three names for capitals. Following the party MPs’ reiteration of their stance in the state assembly meeting on Sunday, a vote will be undertaken to choose the name and capital.

As the parliamentarians could not finish their speeches in the meeting on Sunday, the parliament meeting was called again on Monday at 11 o’clock. According to the Parliament Secretariat of the State Assembly, the voting time will be fixed to decide the name and the capital after the parliamentarians have finished their speeches today.

The parliamentary committee headed by the Speaker has covered the names of the states including Madhes, Janaki, Mithila-Bhojpura and Central Madhes and the capital Janakpur, Dhalkebar-Kamala in the northeast to the border of Nepal in the south, Birgunj Metropolitan City and Birgunj, Simara Jitpur, Nijgadh to Simraungadh.

The name of the state is a joint proposal of JSP, Loktantrik Samajwadi Party and Maoists (Center) in Madhesh. Janaki is the UML and CPN (Unified Socialist) proposal. Mithila-Bhojpura is the proposal of the Nepali Congress. The Bara-Parsa MPs of all these parties have separately proposed the name of the state as Madhya Madhes.

Though Janakpur is the common proposal of all the parties in the capital, the MPs of all the parties of Bara-Parsa have tabled a separate proposal of Birgunj.

State 2 currently has a coalition government of JSP, Congress, UCPN (M) and CPN (Unified Socialist). After the Maoists took action against 4 out of 107 MPs in the state assembly, there are currently 104 MPs.

A two-thirds vote is required to decide the name and capital of the state. Earlier, even in Chaitra 2076 (March 2020), two-thirds of the votes could not reach any proposal to finalize the name and capital.