CHITWAN, JANUARY 4

Nepal Communist Party (NCP) Secretariat member and Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa, who is close to Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, said that they were working to purge some unruly and disgruntled forces of the party.

Addressing a meet organised by Nepal Communist Party (Oli) in Chitwan, Thapa said purification would help strengthen the party.

He noted that appropriate policy, programme and leadership alone would help take the country on the path of socialism. “The country is heading towards socialism.

We are meeting here to protest against the factionalism seen inside the party,” he added. He stressed the need to expose wrong leadership of the party and unify under Oli’s leadership.

Thapa slammed Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Madhav Kumar Nepal and charged that they were promoting factionalism inside the party. “While we are working to make a healthy party, Dahal and Nepal are making a small group,” Thapa added.

Thapa flayed the gathering organised by the Nepal and Dahal faction and said theirs was a meeting of a group.

“Their gathering is not that of the party but of a group. Ideology and policy drive the leadership.

They have taken action against the Prime Minister and Chairman KP Sharma Oli, which is against the party policy and programme,” he added, expressing his dissatisfaction with the recent happenings.

Thapa advised Pushpa Kamal Dahal to go for fresh polls if he wished to become prime minister. “The old Parliament cannot make Dahal the prime minister. Only the new elected House of Representatives can make him prime minister. So I invite them to go for mid-term polls,” he stated.

One has to go to the polls to become prime minister and to the cadres to be party chairman.

I challenge Dahal to go to the polls to become the PM, Thapa added.

At the programme, Lumbini Province Chief Minister Shankar Pokhrel said going to the polls for a fresh mandate would not be an autocratic move. He defended PM KP Sharma Oli saying that Oli had faced India’s blockade strongly and helped keep the country united against ethnic divisions.

“Oli has worked day and night for good governance and infrastructure development,” Pokhrel said.