Kathmandu, April 24 Youth leaders of the Nepali Congress today demanded an early general convention by amending the party statute through Maha Samiti. Making such a demand, NC leader Gagan Thapa presented a 51-page report in the ongoing meeting of the Central Working Committee on behalf of youth leaders, including Chandra Bhandari, Dhan Raj Gurung, Pradip Paudel, Guru Ghimire, Badri Pandey and Ram Krishna Yadav. Stating that it would be too late to wait for two more years for the general convention as per the existing provisions in the statute amid an urgent need for restructuring the party’s organisation in line with the new federal set-up, the report said continuing with the present leadership meant misinterpretation of the election mandate. “We have devised an ideological outline to maintain a robust organisation, but if the leadership is complacent and status-quoist, how can the organisation be dynamic?” the report read. “The NC could not work as per the people’s expectation, could not ensure good governance, could not deliver tangible results, and could not become accountable and answerable to the people,” read the statement. “It could not even convince the people that it at least made efforts.” The report also stated that party weakened and became ineffective due to politicisation of institutions which should have been made robust for strengthening democracy. It stated a few NC members made the people’s mandate a ladder for ascending to power rather than working for the welfare of the general public, which made the party unpopular. Because of the NC’s weaknesses, the communist parties gained ground on the NC’s own turf, read the report. “It is our playground, it is our game and it is our rules. Is it that the communists played really impressively? No. We left empty a huge section of the playground and limited ourselves to a very small section since 2048.” The report also said the NC was facing ‘existential crisis’. Following the promulgation of the new constitution, democracy and freedom have been established as an option-less fact in Nepal, which resulted in a vacuum in the party’s ideological identity. “In order to get out of the existential crisis, the party’s ideological base should be made clear and contemporary.”