Kathmandu, August 23

Renu Chand, a legislator from CPN-MC, has accused Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli of being 'women-phobic', citing a series of events since the formation of the CPN-UML and the Nepali Congress government.

During the National Assembly's zero-hour yesterday, she stated, 'The government's recent actions have raised the question of whether PM Oli is misogynistic.' According to Chand, the Oliled government has been extremely antagonistic to women's leadership since its inception. According to her, the recent saga in PM Oli's such act is an 'attempt to sack Deputy Speaker Indira Rana Magar'.

Recently, the ruling coalition – Nepali Congress and CPNUML – had started collecting signatures of their lawmakers on blank paper in an attempt to muster a two-thirds support to remove Deputy Speaker Indira Rana.

Last year, Rana landed in a controversy when the media reported that she wanted to facilitate visas for some unrelated people when she was trying to go to the US to attend a conference in March 2023.

In February 2023, she had written to the US Embassy in Kathmandu to arrange interview dates for six people, including herself.

NC and CPN-UML would need support from some fringe parties as well to secure a two-thirds majority required to expel Rana. However, reports have emerged that the bid to sack Rana has been halted due to backlashes and factional disputes in NC.

NC leader Shekhar Koirala and his supporters refused to sign the paper that the Parliamentary Party had asked for. Earlier, Rana told THT that she talked to NC leader Koirala over the phone and got assurance from him that he would not support the bid to remove her.

Chand also noted that PM Oli is after his party membership renewal and the ending of the political career of the woman leader. Recently, a huge uproar has emerged, and UML appears to be divided over the membership renewal of former president Bidhya Devi Bhandari.

Former president Bhandari has been consistently claiming that her membership has been renewed. PM Oli has refused to recognise it. Addressing the party's induction programme organised at the party office in Chyasal yesterday, PM Oli said that Bhandari herself renounced it when she became the president. According to PM Oli, the UML did not reject former president Bhandari's membership. 'She abandoned the membership to become the president,' he explained. 'When she returns, the staff should not be duped into providing the membership receipt. In her case, it appears that the staff gave her a membership receipt because she was the former president. That is not the way it is done.'

PM Oli sounded adamant and arrogant while saying that 'the membership that has been abandoned will not be renewed.' He further said, 'If someone does not have a membership, how can it be renewed? She abandoned it on October 28, 2015. Since then, she has not had a party membership. If a membership was dear to her, she should not have become the president. Now, you cannot have both, and it will not be renewed.'

PM Oli stated that there was no discussion, no application for membership and no application for renewal. He further said, 'She has been announcing her membership through TV. I am afraid to say, television will not give out party membership outside.'

'The party made her the president twice, and I never imagined that she would come back and create problems in the party. Instead, I expected her to come and strengthen the party's unity. However, she has always gathered dissatisfied members of the party, particularly those who lost elections in the party's mass organisations.'

Additionally, Chand accused the PM Oli-led government of stopping the promotion of the female to health secretary, despite knowing that she was more qualified and recommended in the first position than the other candidates.

In March, the recommendation committee, led by the chairperson of the Public Service Commission, had recommended the names of Dr Sangita Mishra as the first option for the position of Secretary, Dr Bikash Devkota as the second, and Dr Tanka Barakoti as the third.

Dr Bikas Devkota was promoted to the Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Population following a meeting of the Council of Ministers on March 5. Lawmakers and netizens had accused the health minister and the government of discrimination and favouring Devkota.

Summarising the entire series of events, lawmaker Chand argued, 'There is an issue with the honourable prime minister's viewpoint on women.' She raised concerns about the government's intentions by presenting a series of contentious decisions made by the government and the prime minister.

She claimed that the government's attempts to legalise polygamy and child marriage by setting the marriage age at 16 and failing to renew the membership of female leaders of its own party were examples of its backward nature.

The attempts to bring horrible crimes like rape under amnesty, the start of a campaign to remove the female deputy speaker by gathering a majority of signatures, and the obstruction of Mishra's promotion to Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Health, she said, were not random occurrences.

At the end of her speech, she stated, 'What these incidents prove is that PM Oli and this two-thirds government are anti-women.'

She also questioned whether the esteemed PM Oli is misogynistic and, if not, why he is engaging in such anti-women activities.