Kathmandu, November 9

All the members of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s private secretariat, including advisers, are preparing to tender their resignation before the third week of November in an attempt to help him form a new team.

One knowledgeable source told THT that the secretariat members were preparing to resign with effect from November 17 as PM Oli had asked them to do so.

According to the source, the PM told his confidants that some of the members of the secretariat might be reappointed. “The PM has received complaints against his Chief Adviser Bishnu Rimal ‘for limiting the public’s access to the PM and ‘for interfering in the ministries’ works,” the source said, and added that the PM sought the resignation of all members of his team in order to give the impression that he was not angry with the man he made his chief adviser. The source said that Rimal often held meetings with senior bureaucrats of the ministries to take stock of the ministries’ work and this, the ministers viewed as unnecessary intervention in their works.

A member of the PM’s private secretariat, however, told THT that members of the PM’s private secretariat were themselves preparing to resign in order to help the PM form a new team. When asked if the PM had told the advisers and secretariat members to resign, the source in the PM’s secretariat replied in the negative.

When THT tried to know from the PM’s Chief Adviser Bishnu Rimal, Press Adviser Kundan Aryal and Foreign Affairs Adviser Rajan Bhattarai whether or not they were asked by the PM to quit, they sent an SMS saying they didn’t know about it.