Recently, one of the most powerful leaders of the CPN-UML, Bam Dev Gautam, said federalism was a poison that was driving the country towards conflict and that the moves by the government to amend the constitution were anti-national. Earlier in October, as the parties sat down in an eastern district to decide the boundaries, number and categories of the local bodies, ethnic leaders within the Nepali Congress (NC) were unable to speak within the party. “So we resorted to all-party ethnic organisations to lobby for autonomous areas and protected areas,” one party official said. So sensitive was the issue that when the UML decided to reduce the number of autonomous and protected areas for the district’s ethnic groups, the FM radio station that aired the news was attacked.