Kathmandu, February 22

The Nepali Congress has called a meeting of its Central Working Committee on Sunday to give momentum to the process of electing the parliamentary party leader.

The meeting will approve the amended parliamentary party statute and form an election committee. A meeting of elected Parliament members representing the NC to be held tomorrow will amend the statute and present it to the CWC.

Earlier, a meeting of the NC Central Work Execution Committee scheduled for today was postponed following pressure from leaders close to senior NC leader Ramchandra Paudel who demanded reconstitution of the committee stating that it was formed in violation of the party statute.

Concluding that the root cause of problems in the party was the leadership’s failure to abide by the party statute, the leaders have launched a campaign to pressure NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba to abide strictly by the party statute in running the party.

Although tomorrow’s CWC meeting is being convened purely for election of the PP leader, it will also dwell on contemporary politics and the NC’s strategy for elections of the president, vice president, speaker and deputy speaker, according to NC leader Bal Krishna Khand.

The election for president is slated for March 13, but the NC has yet to come up with any official decision on how to move ahead with the election. “We have yet to discuss the matter. The CWC will finalise it,” said Khand.

The elected members of Parliament will take oath of office and secrecy on March 4, while the first meeting of the Parliament will be held the following day. So the NC plans to elect the PP leader before the first House meeting.

So far, three leaders — NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba, Shashank Koirala and Prakash Man Singh — are in the fray for the post of PP leader. While Koirala has said he will file his candidacy only if he is elected unanimously, Singh has said that Deuba should not be allowed to be elected unopposed and that he was ready to contest the election against Deuba.

However, chances are high that the Paudel camp will project Koirala as PP leader candidate, given the likelihood of ‘Koirala garnering more votes than Singh’, according to an NC leader. Both Koirala and Singh represent the Paudel camp.

“Koirala has also given his green signal,” said the NC leader, adding that in a meeting of the Paudel camp, Koirala expressed his readiness to contest against Deuba if other leaders wanted him to do so.

There are 76 members representing the NC in the federal Parliament, including both lower and upper houses.

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