Kathmandu, March 9
Former prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has decided to go back to his former CPN-UML party following a Supreme Court verdict on Sunday that rejected the merger between the CPN-UML and the CPN-Maoist Centre.
The verdict was a big blow for Nepal because he was siding with the Maoist Centre’s chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal against the UML’s chairman KP Sharma Oli, in their bid to form a new party following the virtual split in the unified Nepal Communist Party.
While Oli has already hinted that he would revive the UML as it was before the merger, Dahal and Nepal held a meeting on Monday and decided to return to previous parties.
During the meeting, Nepal nonetheless said efforts should continue to merge the two parties again, according to a source.
“We should respect the court verdict. Whatever comes, we should control and unify again to make the communist party stronger.”
With Nepal’s decision, efforts of both sides to split the unified NCP have ended with the court taking them back to the pre-merger position where Nepal sides with Oli and Dahal leads a separate party.
In the revived UML, Oli has an apparent majority against Nepal, hence it will be quite difficult for him to establish his agenda.
