Kathmandu, February 4:

Staunch royalists are beginning a conference in Kathmandu tomorrow to form a force billed as an alternative to the Seven-Party Alliance (SPA) for the April 10 Constituent Assembly election.

The Rastriya Prajatantra Party Nepal (RPPN) took the initiative to form a Front of

‘like-minded’ fringe political parties to face the election with an agenda of “any form of monarchy, nationality and democracy”. The party had recently formed a five-member team coordinated by Tanka Dhakal, communications minister in the Royal regime.

Dhakal said his team had several rounds of discussions with like-minded political parties for the Front and his team, last week, held a “preliminary discussion” with the Pashupati SJB Rana-led RPP and the Surya Bahadur Thapa-led Rastriya Janashakti Party for unification of the parties.

Those meetings have been at a ‘very preliminary level’, Dhakal added.

“We are holding a political conference tomorrow in Kathmandu among 30 like-minded political parties to form a Front,” Dhakal said.

RPP Spokesperson Parsuram Khapung, however, denied having held any political discussion with the RPP-N in recent days. He, however, said meetings with the RPP-N leaders should not be seen as extraordinarily since “we have a good personal relationship with them”.

Sources claimed that RPP and the RJP are not invited to the conference “considering their current position”. Both the parties have deleted the term constitutional monarchy from their statutes.

The Front will have short-term as well as long-term aims, RPP-N central leader Roshan Karki said. While its short-term aim is to face the CA polls, the long-term aim is to consolidate democracy and nationality with the monarchy in place.