KATHMANDU, March 25: Chairperson of the ruling Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, KP Sharma Oli, has called a meeting of the party's parliamentary party for Friday afternoon.

Chairperson Oli, who is also the prime minister, called the party's parliamentary party meeting at 3PM on Friday, according to Bishal Bhattarai, a leader of the party who was recently designated as the party's chief whip.

The meeting will take place at Baluwatar, the official residence of the prime minister, according to Bhattarai.

Earlier last week, the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led faction of the party, boycotted the parliamentary party meeting while taking strong exception to the "unilateral decisions" made by the Oli-led faction.

The meeting is going to take place at a time when dispute within the ruling party is at its peak owing to factional feud. The two factions led by KP Sharma Oli and Madhav Kumar Nepal are at loggerheads over a host of intra-party issues.

Miffed at the Oli-led faction's unilateral actions, the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led faction has already held a national gathering of party cadres and leaders in Kathmandu while it shunned the party's parliamentary party meeting and central committee meeting called at the convenience of the rival faction.  The Madhav Kumar Nepal-led faction has also already formed the party's parallel committees across the country.

The CPN-UML, which was revived after the Supreme Court's verdict to invalidate the then Nepal Communist Party born out of the merger between the then CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Center) in 2018, has witnessed a serious rift within the party as the Oli-led faction is taking actions one after another against the leaders of the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led faction accusing them of being involved in factional politics.

On March 12, the Oli-led faction nominated 23 new members to the party’s Central Committee (CC). A meeting of the party’s CC members close to Oli made a decision to nominate 23 former Maoist leaders who chose to join the UML as CC members.

The Oli-led faction has sought clarification from the leaders belonging to the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led faction for getting ‘involved in factional politics by going against the party’s interests’. However, the rival faction has said that the party is facing trouble due to Oli's growing hegemony.

The Oli-led faction has taken a series of actions against the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led faction which was earlier taking side with the Dahal-led faction when the Nepal Communist Party existed until the Supreme Court's verdict to invalidate the NCP. 

Despite strong warnings and threats from Chairperson KP Sharma Oli, the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led faction has continued its parallel activities in recent weeks. With growing squabbling between the two factions, the ruling CPN-UML is on the verge of a split.

 
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