BFV-BRST quantization of anomalous d=2 non-abelian chiral theory

Working in the hamiltonian formalism, we show that the anomalous theory of N Dirac fermions, chirally coupled to a U (N) gauge field in two dimensions, is a gauge fixed symmetric theory. Thus, one may work with the gauge symmetric theory instead of its gauge fixed version - the anomalous one. Using the BFV-BRST procedure we quantize the symmetric theory, and show that the theory is formally consistent and unitary provided a > 1, where a denotes an arbitrary regularization parameter appearing in the quantum theory. We comment on the advantage of working with the symmetric theory for the investigation of the renormalization properties of the anomalous theory.