Kathmandu, March 7
Concluding the hearing of a more-than-two-year-old case, the Supreme Court has rejected the Election Commission’s decision to name the new party formed after the merger of the then CPN-UML and the UCPN-Maoist Centre as the Nepal Communist Party (NCP).
Rishi Kattel, who had filed a writ petition against the decision, won the case, and his party would get that name.
The verdict comes at a time when the unified NCP formed in 2018 after the merger of the UML and the Maoist Centre, led by KP Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal respectively, is virtually split already.
In effect, the decision means that the unification made in 2018 is not legally recognised, and two constituents, CPN-UML and the CPN-Maoist Centre, are in existence.
If the parties want to merge, they need to begin the merger procedure again, the court told.
A division bench of justices Bam Kumar Shrestha and Kumar Regmi issued the writ on Sunday.
Since the establishment of NCP led by Oli and Dahal after the merger of then CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre, the party had been facing the charge of duplicating the name of the small party.
The Election Commission had put the acronym (NCP) after the name of the new party to avoid duplication, but the Kattel-led party had been saying it does not work.
Whereas Kattel’s party’s acronym is ‘NeKaPa’ in Nepali, the commission had given the acronym of ‘Ne.Ka.Pa.’ (with dots) to the new party.
