Kathmandu, October 21

Nepal Communist Party (NCP) Secretariat today brushed aside the controversial resignation tendered by Kathmandu Constituency-7 lawmaker Ram Bir Manandhar in favour of senior leader Bam Dev Gautam, who has long been seeking to get elected to the House of Representatives.

The party’s high command decided that ‘no decision needed to be taken on Manandhar’s resignation’, said NCP Spokesperson Narayan Kaji Shrestha, emerging from a meeting that lasted for five-and-a-half hours at the official residence of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli in Baluwatar.

The agendas for today’s meeting were issues related to dissatisfaction among some leaders of the ruling party, Manandhar’s resignation and a note of dissent submitted by senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal over the secretariat’s decision to appoint in-charges, assistant in-charges, chairs and secretaries at the party’s provincial units, among others.

Nepal’s complaint was that the secretariat had decided in his absence without consulting him while he was visiting Ghana. He had submitted a note of dissent to the party’s General Secretary Bishnu Paudel. Bringing the party’s internal issues to the fore, Nepal had even slammed the government in his recent Parliament address.

Shrestha said today’s meeting discussed all the agendas but no decisions were taken, and that the meeting would continue tomorrow at 1:00pm.

“Our discussions focused on how to further strengthen the party, finalisae the unification of lower committees and sister organisations of the then CPN-MC and CPN-UML, and make the government successful on the basis of unified party leadership,” he said. “The discussions will culminate in concrete decisions.”

According to a party source, today’s meeting saw everyone, especially Nepal and Gautam, putting forth their dissatisfaction. Nepal told the meeting his Parliament address was neither criticism nor opposition of the government, but a bid to ‘correct’ it, said the source.

Gautam also told the meeting he had moved ahead as per the secretariat’s decision that he would be allowed to fight election if any lawmaker resigned. “However, I was defamed in a planned way,” the source quoted Gautam as telling the meeting.