In 2006, after years of an insurgency that left at least 13,000 people dead, Nepal’s Maoist rebels agreed to put down their arms and join in a democratic political process.

An interim Constitution was adopted the next year, and in 2008, the Constituent Assembly was elected to a two-year term and the monarchy was abolished. But the term was extended after political parties failed to reach an agreement on the provinces.

In June, after the earthquake, the major parties agreed on a constitutional structure in which the lower house of Parliament would have 60 percent of its seats elected directly and the rest elected through a proportional representation system. The parties had proposed to determine provincial boundaries through a commission, but the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution could only be passed with the provinces in place, and last month, six federal provinces were delineated. After protests broke out in the midwestern region, a seventh province was created, in the hills.

“In going from six to seven was where the mistake was made,” said Kanak Mani Dixit, the founding editor of Himal Southasian magazine and a political commentator. The plains people “felt absolutely cheated and bereft because the Kathmandu-based politicians did not show sensitivity to them while showing sensitivity to the hill people.”

Protests became violent. On Aug. 24, at least six police officials and three civilians were killed in clashes in western Nepal. This month in the Mahottari District, southeast of the capital, an injured riot police officer was dragged from an ambulance and beaten to death. Last week, a 4-year-old boy was among four people killed when the police fired rubber bullets in Rupandehi, west of Kathmandu.

Politicians have been criticized for failing to consult a wider segment of society in the drafting of the document.

“This should have been a Constitution that was a progressive leap for Nepal,” said Prashant Jha, a journalist at The Hindustan Times in India and the author of “Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal.” “Instead it represents a conservative backlash.”