Nepal’s cabinet recommended the dissolution of the country’s parliament in a meeting on Sunday, state media reported. The development comes amid a protracted power struggle between him and former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’.
Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli called an emergency meeting of the Council of Ministers after a series of meetings with top leaders and ministers of the ruling Communist Party of Nepal on Saturday, the Himalayan Times reported.
The cabinet meeting decided to recommend the dissolution of Parliament to the president, the Kathmandu Post reported, citing Energy Minister Barshaman Pun. The recommendation will now be sent to President Bidya Devi Bhandari for approval, according to reports.
“The prime minister has lost the majority in the parliamentary party, the central committee and the party secretariat,” said Bishnu Rijal, a member of the central committee of the ruling Communist Party of Nepal.
“Instead of seeking a compromise within the party, he chose to dissolve parliament.” The House of Representatives, elected in 2017, has 275 members. Prime Minister Oli contacted Rashtrapati Bhawan with the decision of the council of ministers.
It was previously reported that Prachanda had come to the prime minister’s residence to obtain first-hand information on the matter. However, Oli refused to reveal anything except that he would “take firm action today”.
Reuters reported that an aide to Oli said he wants to seek a new term in a general election after losing support from his own party. Oli’s aide Rajan Bhattarai said that the prime minister had made the decision due to backlash from his party, which had also asked him to consider resigning as president.
“So he decided to face the people in an election,” Bhattarai told Reuters. “This is the best way in a democracy.”
The next general elections were to be held in 2022. It was not immediately clear when an early election would be called if, as expected, the president of Nepal accepts the cabinet’s request.
Opposition lawmaker Gagan Thapa in the Nepalese Congress said on Twitter that the cabinet’s decision was “unconstitutional and undemocratic.”
The move comes as the dispute within the party reached a climax in the ruling NCP, which has witnessed a fight for months between two factions, one led by Oli, 68, and the party chairman, and another led by Prachanda. , 66, too. the party’s chief executive and former prime minister.
The main leader of the ruling PNC and former Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal called the measure unconstitutional. Constitutional experts have also called the measure to dissolve Parliament unconstitutional.
Under the provision of Nepal’s constitution, there is no provision for dissolution of Parliament by the prime minister of a majority government, they said, adding that Oli’s measure is likely to be challenged in court. As long as the possibility of forming the government exists, there is no provision to dissolve the House, said constitutional expert Dinesh Tripathi.
Meanwhile, the main Nepalese Opposition Congress (NC) has called an emergency meeting of the party on Sunday. The move comes a day after NC and the Rastriya Janata Party decided to ask the president to convene a Special Session of Parliament.
North Carolina President and former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba recently criticized the Oli government for its attempts to impose a totalitarian one-party government on the country. He blamed the government for not working to control the increasing cases of rape and corruption. “The government is carried away by corruption even in the course of COVID-19
pandemic, “Deuba alleged last week.
Separately, the Prachanda and Madhav Nepal faction have been urging Oli to step down as prime minister amid mounting accusations and counter-charges between the two factions in the ruling PNC. On November 13, in his 19-page political document presented at the PNC Secretariat meeting, Prachanda criticized Oli for not properly leading both the government and the party, and even accused Oli of corruption.
However, Oli, known for his pro-China leanings, denied the allegations and challenged Prachanda to legally prove the corruption charges or apologize. Oli rejected his accusations that he was running the government without consulting the party and instead blamed his rival for not cooperating in running the party’s affairs.
The prime minister had submitted a separate 38-page political document in response to the accusations made by Prachanda. In June, Oli claimed that efforts were being made to overthrow him after his government redesigned the country’s political map by incorporating three strategically key indigenous territories.
India had called the “artificial enlargement” of Nepal’s land claims “unsustainable” after its Parliament unanimously approved the country’s new political map with the Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura areas that India maintains as its own. The NCP, formed after the merger between the Oli-led CPN-UML and the Prachanda-led CPN (Maoist Center) in May 2018, is split into the two factions led by Oli and Prachanda.
(With inputs from agencies)
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