KATHMANDU: The much-awaited Secretariat meeting of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) convened this morning at the Prime Minister’s official residence in Baluwatar has endorsed the six-member task force formed to resolve the internal rift that has surfaced in the party of late.
Party sources said the meeting formalized the task force formed by a meeting of the NCP Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Prime Minister KP Oli on Friday.
The task force led by NCP General Secretary Bishnu Paudel has Shankar Pokharel, Bhim Rawal, Janardan Sharma, Surendra Pandey and Pampha Bhusal as members.
The task force held its first meeting on Saturday. The ruling NCP was caught in a quagmire due to the rift between PM Oli and Dahal on power sharing issues.
NCP Secretariat members met on Monday exactly one month after the previous meeting, which was held on July 18.
Though the meeting of the Secretariat was expected to review the performance of the government, the meeting is yet to come out with a concrete outcome.
Meanwhile, NCP Spokesperson Narayan Kaji Shrestha said the meeting, besides discussing the current issues, has provided an impetus to the party.
It may be noted that NCP senior leaders Jhala Nath Khanal and Madhav Kumar Nepal as well as Spokesperson Shrestha had last week demanded a meeting of the Secretariat in a bid to endorse the decision of PM Oli and Dahal on Friday to form a six-member task force to resolve the disputes.
The dispute further escalated after PM Oli “unilaterally” postponed a meeting of the Standing Committee on July 28.
However, the disgruntled section led by Chairman Dahal continued with the meeting and labelled PM Oli’s decision as “unfortunate”.
PM Oli and Dahal resumed their talks on Thursday – a day after PM Oli, in a television interview last Wednesday, had said that the intra-party rift would be narrowed down within five days, and that the countdown had begun the same day.
Prime Minister Oli and NCP Chairman Dahal were at loggerhead earlier on convening the meeting of the Secretariat.
While PM Oli had insisted on convening the Secretariat meeting, Dahal had proposed a meeting of the Standing Committee to thrash out the intra-party differences.
Comment