Ex-PM’s Party Walks Out Of Nepal Coalition, Says It “Has Lost Relevance”

Chairman of Maoist Center Pushpa Kamal Dahal, stormed out from the coalition meeting. (File)

Kathmandu:

The Maoist Center, the third party in terms of numbers in the Nepali parliament, has walked out of the ruling coalition blaming PM Sher Bahadur Deuba for backing off from promises made earlier.

Chairman of Maoist Center Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda, storming out from the coalition meeting announced the end of the coalition, a senior Nepali Congress leader confirmed. “First you promised, now you backtracked. The coalition has lost its relevance” Ram Chandra Paudel, one of the senior leaders of Nepali Congress quoted Prachanda as saying.

Dahal, aka Prachanda, walked out of the meeting, the Congress leader said. After walking out of the meeting venue early on Sunday afternoon, Dahal then headed for Balkot to hold a meeting with opposition leader KP Sharma Oli.

As per the photos released by Oli’s secretariat, Dahal was welcomed graciously and is sitting close to the opposition leader. Notably, Dahal had ended relations with Oli after the intra-party rift which also lead to the split of the Communist Party of Nepal- Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) some 3 years ago.

Dahal has broken the alliance after not getting the post of Prime Minister since the inception of the new government that needs to be formed before 5 pm today and claimed before the President.

On Sunday’s meeting, the two leaders Deuba and Dahal also engaged in a heated conversation, ending the meeting without any conclusion.

Earlier, Maoist Centre’s General Secretary Dev Gurung had also threatened Nepali Congress that they would “walk out” from the coalition if the latter remained adamant on their demand to hold both the president and prime minister positions.

“If the Congress is adamant on their demand of holding the position of President and PM, then there’s no need for a coalition. We would simply walk out from it,” Gurung told ANI over the phone on Sunday.

“This same statement was made in Saturday’s meeting and is also conveyed today. We have come to the conclusion in the meeting to walk out of the coalition in case the same instance is repeated. Still, the final decision would be made by the party chairman in the meeting,” he added.

Maoist Centre Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda has been insisting that he should lead the government while Nepali Congress has been adamant about its position of leading the government as the largest party.

The political drama is running high in Kathmandu as the deadline given by President Bidya Devi Bhandari to the parties to recommend a name for the Prime Minister within 7 days ends Sunday at 5 PM (local time).

President Bhandari has asked the parties to agree on a consensus prime ministerial candidate as per Article 76(2) of the Constitution.

After the Election Commission published the final result of the House of Representatives election, President Bhandari called the parties for government formation.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)