KATHMANDU, JULY 24
As the authenticity dispute intensified in the party, factions of Janata Samajbadi Party-Nepal led by Mahanatha Thakur-Rajendra Mahato and Upendra Yadav-Baburam Bhattarai held their respective Executive Committee meetings to devise further strategies.
The Election Commission is scheduled to do a head count of the party's executive members on Monday to understand which members of the 51-member Executive Committee is with which faction.
While the Yadav-Bhattarai faction claims to have majority in the Executive Committee, the Thakur-Mahato faction claims that Thakur had already expelled 20 members from the Executive Committee and inducted an equal number to the party's top body maintaining his majority in it.
JSP-N lawmaker M Ishtiyak Rayi, who is close to Yadav, said the Executive Committee, discussed common minimum programme for the coalition government.
He said the CMP that was likely to be signed within a few days would also contain some of the issues that his party had been raising, such as citizenship amendment laws, constitution amendment and release of political leaders and cadres falsely indicted in criminal cases.
Rayi said his faction distributed the draft of the Parliamentary Party statute to the Executive Committee members for their perusal. The Executive Committee will have to endorse the draft before the Parliamentary Party elects a new leader.
Rayi said his faction was ready to keep party unity intact if the Thakur-Mahato faction admitted their mistakes, but even after voting in favour of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba during the trust vote on Sunday, the faction had not admitted its mistake.
"It is well known that federalism and inclusion were ensured in the constitution as a result of Madhes agitation and the Thakur-Mahato faction supported former prime minister KP Sharma Oli who was trying to sabotage the constitution,"
Rayi said and added that unless the Thakur-Mahato faction admitted its mistake, reconciliation with his faction would not be possible.
Although the Thakur faction eventually voted in favour of PM Deuba during the trust vote, Thakur made an objectionable remark that Deuba became the PM as a result of the court-issued mandamus and not people's mandate, Rayi added.
Thakur-Mahato faction lawmaker Laxman Lal Karna said his faction held an informal meeting of Executive Committee members without taking any decision.
He said there was no reason for his faction to apologise and Yadav was not in favour of party unity because he wanted to have absolute control over the party.
The Thakur-Mahato faction filed a writ petition at the Supreme Court yesterday demanding that the court issue an interim order against the EC telling it to stay its process of doing head count on Monday.
Karna said that the EC did not accept his faction's argument that Thakur, who had been authorised by the party to reshuffle the Executive Committee, had removed 20 members from the 51-member Executive Committee and added an equal number to the party's top body.
He said that as per Section 44 (1) of the Political Party Act, Yadav was supposed to submit signatures of 40 per cent members of the Executive Committee to claim authenticity, but in this case, he just wrote a letter to the EC without submitting the signatures of any other Executive Committee member.
Executive member Rajkishor Yadav who had left the Thakur-Mahato faction to join the Yadav-Bhattarai faction today told both the factions that he was for party unity.
He said he told Thakur that he would not have his support if the latter made any attempt to split the party.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 25 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
