KATHMANDU, AUGUST 24
The CPN-UML Standing Committee today asked those leaders who had petitioned to split the party to return to the party fold.
The Standing Committee, which was also attended by 10 members who had left the Madhav Kumar Nepal faction after he filed a petition seeking to split the UML and register a new party, decided to treat everybody equally without any prejudice if they returned to the mother party, said UML Spokesperson Pradeep Kumar Gyawali.
Briefing mediapersons after the Standing Committee meeting, Gyawali said the party body also decided to revive all party structures and committees that existed before the UML's merger with the CPN-Maoist Centre. He added that leaders would be given the same responsibilities they held prior to the UML-CPN-MC merger.
He said party Chair KP Sharma Oli had shown maximum flexibility by even offering the second chairmanship to Nepal who had lost the party presidency to Oli. Nepal, however, decided to split the party. He said the party was ready to resolve all issues through discussions.
Gyawali said regressive forces were trying to split the party.
He also clarified that CPN-MC leaders who shouldered the party responsibility when Nepal Communist Party (NCP) existed, and who chose to stay with the UML, would be given the same role in the party as that was also floated by the taskforce in the 10-point unity proposal.
The UML also formed a taskforce to nominate 10 per cent members in the Central Committee and form party departments that were yet to be formed. The UML Standing Committee decided to hold the party's next General Convention from November 26- 28, and the statute convention from September 20-22 in Kathmandu.
Similarly, the party will hold its ward conventions and local level conventions on October 23 and October 26.
In an attempt to give party cadres a message that most of the leaders were united, the leaders who attended the meeting today, particularly those Standing Committee members close to Madhav Kumar Nepal in the past, called the third-fronters, clicked a picture with party Chair KP Sharma Oli at the end of the Standing Committee meeting.
The third front leaders who had called Oli's move dissolving the House of Representatives 'regressive', eventually sided with him.
A version of this article appears in the print on August 25 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
