The faction headed by TMDP General Secretary and Minister for Industry Mahendra Prasad Yadav apprised Speaker Subash Nembang Friday morning of nine lawmakers´ decision to form TMDP-N. TMDP had altogether 20 lawmakers in parliament. [break]
Though TMDP originally won 21 seats in the Constituent Assembly (CA) elections in 2008, one lawmaker, Ram Kumar Sharma, quit the party to join the UCPN (Maoist) in August.
Arbind Sah, Govind Chaudhary, Dan Bahadur Chaudhary Kurmi, Sallahuddin Musalman, Chandan Sah, Sumitra Devi Raya Yadav, Ramani Ram and Urmila Mahato Koiri are the other lawmakers defecting from TMDP.
Mahendra Prasad Yadav, who was general secretary of the mother party, has been nominated parliamentary party leader of the newly-formed TMDP-Nepal and coordinator of the new party. They have named Arbind Sah as chief whip. While Kurmi is state minister for industry in the present government, Govind Chaudhary is chairman of the CA thematic committee for determining the form of constitutional bodies.
"We were compelled to take this step as the party chairman [Mahantha Thakur] and a few other leaders always took important decisions arbitrarily without consultations with the other leaders," said Coordinator Yadav.
He also accused Thakur and other leaders of promoting a nomination system as against their demand to institutionalize an election system for appointments to important posts in the party. When the dissident leaders announced the new party in the capital Thakur was in his home district, Sarlahi.
A provision of the Parliament Act states that 40 percent of lawmakers defecting from the mother party can go ahead and form a new party. “We have nine lawmakers and that makes our strength almost 45 percent,” State Minister Kurmi told Republica.
Despite repeated attempts, Mahanta Thakur could not be contacted for comment. However, Brijesh Kumar Gupta, chief whip of the mother party, dismissed having such problems inside the party. He claimed that the Yadav-led group formed a new party in a bid to engage themselves in power plays, with the beginning of a new process to form a government.
"Though it has come as a surprise for us, we have credible information that our party was split in a planned way. They [defectors] have split the party at the behest of a big party which wants their support in government formation," said Gupta. When asked to mane the ´big party´, he said the name would be disclosed once the government formation process starts.
Kurmi claimed that the party chairman´s decision to sack then Vice-president Ramchandra Kusawaha on grounds of corruption and to appoint “defeated” candidate Sarbendra Nath Sukla as education minister a few months back were Thakur´s individual decisions and undemocratic.
Dissident leaders said the party´s central committee meeting has not been held for the past eight months and the recommendations of the party working committee have not been implemented since six months.
Speaker Nembang verified the signatures of all nine TMDP lawmakers who were present at the speaker´s office. "They have completed all the procedures to form a new parliamentary party in the House," said Nembang. According to parliament secretariat officials, the secretariat will now have to make arrangements for their parliamentary party office, seating in the parliament meeting hall and other facilities required for a separate political party.
Yadav, who had defected from the CPN (UML) in 2007, played an instrumental role in convincing Thakur to defect from the Nepali Congress (NC) and form the TMDP.
Govind Chaudhary said they will go to the Election Commission to register the new party after few days as some leaders interested in joining the new party are currently in their home districts. "We have the support of nearly 50 percent of leaders of the 52-member central committee of the mother party. Once we are all gathered in the capital, we will go to the EC for the new party registration," he told Republica.
With the split in TMDP, the number of political parties in the 601-seat CA has reached 28. Originally, 25 political parties were represented in the CA after the CA election. Earlier, Madhesi People´s Rights Forum (MPRF) lawmakers led by Bijay Kumar Gachchhadar had defected to form the MPRF (Democratic) during the formation of the present government in 2008. Likewise, four of the five lawmakers from the CPN-ML had broken away a few months ago and formed a new party, CPN-ML (Socialist).
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