Damaru Lal Bhandari

Kathmandu, February 12:

The Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) is expected to call a meeting of its central committee to decide its future course in the backdrop of the February 1 royal announcement. The party is in for a tightrope walk until other political parties come up with their stance.

The meet could be called within a week to discuss the latest political development, with a large section of the central members seeing nothing wrong in the royal announcement.

While the formal decision is yet to come party president Pashupati Shumshere Rana, joint general-secretary Khem Raj Pandit and outgoing minister Thakur Prasad Sharma are reportedly against any decision to hail the move.

Yet another leader who went with Rana was Parshu Ram Khapung. The fact that the party could face tough time to come to any consensus decision became evident at the end of a dinner meeting held last evening, with Rana expected to confer with remainder of the 39-member central committee in due course.

Source said the section opposed to the idea of welcoming the move argued that hailing the changes could affect their “democratic image insinuating at the anomalies involved.” Senior leaders Lokendra Bahadur Chand and Biswabandhu Thapa also attended the dinner meet.

One could compare this with what members of the rival faction say. “Since the royal move has not banned the political parties and has expressed unflinching commitment to democracy, there is no reason why we should not back the move,” said Bhuwan Pathak, a central member.

Meanwhile, a section of the party including vice-chairman Padma Sundar Lawoti, treasurer Deepak Bohora, spokesman Roshan Karki and joint general-secretary Dhruva Bahadur Pradhan, outgoing ministers Jog Meher Shrestha, Kamal Thapa and Balaram Ghartimagar have been learnt to have stressed the need to hail “the move as something which had no alternative”

They hold the view that there was no alternative to the royal move since nothing was falling in right place anyway. Inter alia, commitment to multi-party democracy which has come in profusely from the King is being taken as the basis for the support.