Nepali politics and leadership were ruled by a centralized, unitary, monarchial, and exclusionary Hindu Kingdom before 2006. As a result of a decade long
“Peoples war” as well as Maoist movement, the country has declared as republican,
federal, secular, and inclusive. The root causes of the conflicts are
class, caste, gender, and regional disparities. The violent conflict was political
and it was purely a byproduct of the discriminatory state structure. It was considered
that the federalization of the state is a prime solution. The peace process was
initiated with the firm commitment of forward-looking state restructuring.
The paper tries to identify the federalization debate among the political parties
during the peace process. This paper tries to capture the debates from
both federalists and anti-federalists. Paper also tries to compare with the expectations
and reality with lapse and gaps. This study is based on available
information, literature and political statements, election manifestos, and other
related documents. Qualitative data has been used. A descriptive and analytical
method has been applied to assess the overall process of federal design. Data/
the information has been obtained from the historical document of political
parties, government repository, and views and ideas expressed by different
stakeholders on the federalization of the state. Finally, some recommendations to
the concerned authority for meeting the expectations within the constitutional
framework have been made. The draft constitution prepared by the 1st Constituent
Assembly had adopted the spirit of identity. Identity was the basis of the
federal design and a bottom-line of the federalist section of the society. However,
in the constitution, the issue of identity-based federalism has been badly
diluted. There is a huge gap between the pre and post constitution stage. The
challenge now is to mitigate the principles of federalism and simultaneously
implement the constitution. The constitution is a compromised document
and therefore my recommendation is again compromised for implementation
of constitution and federalism.