KATHMANDU, June 3: Amid escalating intra-party rift within the party, the ruling CPN-UML has again postponed its Standing Committee meeting scheduled for 4 PM on Thursday afternoon until further notice.
The meeting, which was expected to take necessary decisions on whether or not to take action against 12 leaders of the party, has been put off time and again amid the deepening deadlock in the party. Earlier, a meeting scheduled for Wednesday was also postponed.
UML Standing Committee meeting put off
The party, which was resurrected as it was on May 16, 2018, through a Supreme Court order on March 7 after hearings on a writ petition registered by Rishi Kattel, reconstituted its Standing Committee excluding most leaders close to senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal, who has been leading the dissident faction in the party.
Despite the efforts made by the second-rung leaders of the party, the negotiations are yet to find a meeting point.
A Standing Committee meeting, held on May 24, scrapped even the ordinary membership of 11 leaders including Nepal and another senior leader Jhala Nath Khanal.
The last meeting on Tuesday decided to make possible efforts and initiatives to keep the party unity intact.
The party, which secured a landslide victory in the 2017 general elections after forming an alliance with the Maoists, is currently on the verge of split as nearly two dozen leaders --- members of the dissolved parliament --- joined the signature campaign to support Sher Bahadur Deuba, President of the main opposition Nepali Congress as the new prime minister following the president’s call to stake claim for new government as per Article 76 (5) of the constitution. Later on, they also reached the Supreme Court to file a writ petition signed by them to challenge the latest dissolution of the lower house of parliament.
