Kathmandu, February 27
Hours after the secretariat of the ruling Nepal Communist Party decided to forward the name of the party’s vice-chairman Bamdev Gautam to the government for his nomination as a National Assembly member, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has hinted that he would not be obliged to heed the decision.
Instead, Oli, who is apparently losing his grip on the party gradually, wants to renominate incumbent Finance Minister Yuba Raj Khatiwada, whose term in the Upper House is expiring next week. A few hours after the meeting’s decision on Wednesday, Oli summoned the party’s senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal to his residence in Baluwatar and told him that he would not nominate Gautam for the position. The prime minister says he has been ‘sidelined’ in the party of late.
A source close to the prime minister says Oli feels that Gautam’s name was forwarded in cahoots with a few prominent industrialists of the country who are not happy with Khatiwada. His own party’s executive chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and the main opposition leader Sher Bahadur Deuba also got mobilised in the bid to remove Khatiwada, according to him.
The prime minister senses that Gautam was convinced to join the National Assembly after the industrialists got informed that the prime minister wanted Khatiwada to continue, the source says. Interestingly, Gautam had put forth a condition of constitution amendment to join the Upper House a few days ago, but he had dropped that condition yesterday.
In response, the former prime minister Nepal said Oli should have objected to the decision before the meeting formalised it.
