Federal Socialist Forum Nepal (FSFN) and Rastriya Janata Party Nepal (RJP) have agreed to share the posts of chief minister (CM) and speaker in Province 2.
Vice-chairman of FSFN Mohammad Lal Babu Raut is set to become the CM after being elected consensus parliamentary party leader of FSFN Sunday evening. RJP has also accepted Raut as CM of Province 2.
RJP General Secretary Keshav Jha told Setopati that the FSFN has agreed to give speaker to RJP. FSFN, which has 29 seats in Province 2, and RJP (25) together can form the government in the province that has 107 seats.
Hailing from Parsa, Raut is a Muslim. He was elected member of the second Constituent Assembly (CA) through the proportional representation (PR) system. He was elected to the provincial assembly from Parsa-2(A) in the recent provincial election.
Raut, who has taught English for 20 years, also has an experience of working as a second-class staffer at Birgunj Municipality for 16 years.
Raut, who was close to FSFN Chairman Upendra Yadav since 2001, was active in politics since the Madhes Movement of 2006. He is also an advocate by training but has yet to practice. He will be the first executive head of a province from Muslim community.
He has assured to take all the parties together in the province if he becomes CM. Talking to Setopati, he said he will respect all the parties as he will head a coalition government. "We will form government with RJP," he stated. "We have not discussed about coalition with other parties now. Taking other parties along may be taken with time."
"We will pay attention for welfare of the communities that lag behind in economic, social, educational and human development indices as our party works for the oppressed communities," he assured.
He said the party has the mandate of developing the province, and correcting the mistakes of constitution at the national level. "We have a local problem. There are issues of development.
We suffer from unemployment, poverty and bad governance. We must move forward by facing all these challenges," he stated. "We must also work at the center to move forward by correcting the mistakes in the constitution."
The first meeting of the provincial assembly in the province was convened on Sunday but the date for election of CM has not been fixed.
