HETAUDA, MARCH 28

CPN-UML Bagmati Province's parliamentary party is slated to convene on Wednesday.

After a long hiatus, the meeting was called by Chief Whip Keshav Pande as per the instruction of the parliamentary party leader Chief Minister Dormani Poudel.

According to Pande, CM Poudel will instruct the assembly members of his party to withdraw the no-confidence motion registered by his own party leaders at the meeting. It's worth noting here that the Madhav Kumar Nepal faction, a few days ago, had voiced its intention to withdraw the motion.

The motion registered at the Parliament Secretariat and the Parliament on December 25 and January 22 respectively had proposed to replace CM Poudel with Ashtalaxmi Shakya.

The Wednesday meeting will also discuss the selection of new ministers.

Earlier, at the height of the friction within the then Nepal Communist Party (NCP), three ministers of the then ruling party - Internal Affairs and Law Minister Shalikram Jamkattel, Industry, Tourism, Forest and Environment Minister Arun Nepal, and Social Development Minister Yubraj Dulal - had written to submit a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet head.

While Nepal belongs to the Madhav Nepal faction of the then NCP and the present CPN-UML, Jamkattel and Dulal are close to Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Back then, 45 PA members of NCP had registered the no-confidence motion against Poudel.

Meanwhile, sources have said there was no confirmation whether the Madhav Kumar Nepal faction leaders would participate in the meeting.

At present, the 110-strong Provincial Assembly here has UML as the largest party with 57 PA members, followed by CPN-Maoist Centre with 23 seats and Nepali Congress with 22 seats.

A version of this article appears in the print on March 29, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.