KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 18

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba held a meeting of the ruling coalition partners today as well to discuss the Millennium Challenge Corporation's Nepal Compact, but the meeting ended inconclusively.

According to CPN-Maoist Centre leader Narayan Kaji Shrestha, Deuba, who wanted to table a bill on the MCC compact in the House of Representatives today, agreed to wait till Sunday after CPN-Unified Socialist leader Madhav Kumar Nepal sought time, saying his party's Standing Committee meeting scheduled for tomorrow would take a call on the MCC deal. The CPN-MC has decided to vote against the bill if it is tabled in the House of Representatives without forging consensus at least among the ruling coalition partners.

Minister of Communications and Information Technology Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, who was present in the meeting, said the next meeting of the ruling coalition would be held at 10:00am on Sunday. Karki said the bill would be tabled in the House after next meeting.

Meanwhile, the UML continued to obstruct proceedings of the HoR today following which Speaker Agni Prasad Sapkota adjourned the meeting till 1:00pm on Sunday.

NC General Secretary Gagan Kumar Thapa told mediaperson at the Parliament building that all prime ministers in the past 12 years - from Madhav Kumar Nepal to Sher Bahadur Deuba - were involved with MCC in some way or the other.

He said ruling coalition partners were buying time and trying to deflect the blame solely on the Nepali Congress.

Thapa said when KP Sharma Oli's Cabinet registered the MCC deal in the Parliament, the NC made its stance clear and opposed the then speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara's attempt to block the debate on the deal. The CPN-UML should also make its stance clear on the deal, he added.

Thapa said that when Oli government passed a proposal in the Cabinet to register the MCC deal in the Parliament, CPN-MC leaders Bina Magar, Barshman Pun, and Shakti Basnet were Cabinet members and had okayed the deal from the Cabinet.

He said his party wanted to put the MCC compact to vote and all the ruling coalition partners were free to vote for or against the bill. Thapa said the MCC deal was a matter of Nepal's credibility and it should be passed by the Parliament.

'Our allies say if the American side clarifies doubts, that would be enough. But when the American side did that, our partners started saying that clarifications alone were not enough,' Thapa said.

'If the MCC deal is anti-national for some now, it would be anti-national even after elections,' Thapa said. CPN- US and CPN-MC have been saying that the deal should be put on hold until after polls.

A version of this article appears in the print on February 19, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.