Kathmandu, August 16
The ruling Nepal Communist Party has called its secretariat meeting for Monday.
The meeting to be convened at the prime minister’s residence in Baluwatar from 9 am tomorrow is likely to recognise a six-member task force that two chairpersons of the party–KP Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal–formed on Friday to suggest a possible solution to the differences between them.
Following the decision to form the panel, senior party leaders Jhala Nath Khanal, Madhav Kumar Nepal, and Narayan Kaji Shrestha had questioned the procedure through which the panel was formed. They had met Dahal on Saturday to advise that forming such a panel would through a secretariat meeting be more appropriate.
After several rounds of meetings over the past few weeks, the two chairmen on Friday had agreed to form the task force, including two leaders from each of the three influential factions in the party led by Oli, Dahal, and Nepal respectively,
When the party’s standing committee meeting began on June 24, Dahal had demanded Oli’s resignation from the positions of party chair and prime minister, accusing him of failure. Oli, however, has been refusing to give up even one position, leading the party to the months-long stalemate. Following the dispute, the standing committee meeting has been repeatedly postponed without discussing any item of the set agenda.
