The election commission has started making necessary preparations and the political parties are already out on the hustings. But the road to elections is not without hitches.

The Baidya-driven radicals want to adopt the party line of the Second National Conference in 2001 when they had decided to supplement their Chinese model of revolution (protracted people’s war) with the Russian model (armed urban insurrection).

The Prachanda faction has made an ideological shift from being a revolutionary outfit to a parliamentary party with emphasis on republicanism, and has signalled its friendly posture towards India by discarding the previously ritualistic reference to India as an enemy.

Genuine negotiation efforts, timely discussions, and broader participation of groups asserting rights based on identity are necessary to help break the impasse in Nepali politics on the issue of federalism.

Nepal’s Constituent Assembly did have some positive achievements, the most important among these being the integration of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the UCPN-M, although it failed to fulfil its other main task of finalising a constitution.

A modus vivendi that accepts the concept of federalism in principle as well as the devolution of administrative and financial powers in key functional areas is the need of the hour.