Kathmandu, April 27

The ongoing Central Working Committee meeting of the Nepali Congress, which was supposed to end today, has been extended till tomorrow after the party President Sher Bahadur Deuba called off today’s meeting.

The decision to postpone today’s meeting was taken after senior NC leader Ramchandra Paudel and leader Bijaya Kumar Gachchhadar presented their opinions.

The NC president had planned to conclude the meeting today itself after taking decisions related to poor performance of the party in elections, fixing date and place for the Maha Samiti meeting, formation of statute drafting and central election committees, and announcement of campaigns to revive the party, among others.

However, Deuba postponed the meeting in a bid to seek consensus on the resolution to be passed by the CWC, according to NC CWC member Pradip Paudel.

The camp led by senior leader Paudel has demanded that the CWC decisions should also include annulment of parliamentary board and central work execution committee ‘formed in violation of the party statute’. Leaders representing the Paudel camp are preparing to write a note of dissent if the two bodies are not scrapped.

The Paudel faction has also demanded that the gathering of the NC district presidents be held within this month, followed by Maha Samiti next month. However, the establishment faction is planning to delay the meetings.

In today’s meeting, Paudel reiterated that Deuba should take the responsibility of the humiliating loss in the elections at the hands of the left alliance of the CPN-UML and the CPN-Maoist Centre. He also attributed the election loss especially to the working style of Deuba and decisions taken by his government.

Paudel also said that they were not trying to remove Deuba from leadership, but they wanted change.He also defended the letter he had written to Deuba around two months ago. In the letter, Paudel had accused Deuba of being power hungry and only working in the interest of the leaders representing his camp. However, leaders close to Deuba had slammed Paudel for the ‘type of language’ used in the letter.

Paudel stood firm in his stand and asked, “How many times Ganesh Man Sing became the country’s prime minister and how many times Deuba became the PM? Whom do the people admire, Deuba or Singh?” He said he had not written the letter to make it public, but the spokesperson made it public. Similarly, Gachchhadar, who merged his erstwhile Nepal Democratic Forum with the NC just before the elections, said that he and other NDF leaders should be adjusted in the party in line with the understanding reached during the merger, according to a leader present at the meeting.