KATHMANDU: The ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) has gone back to pre-unification stage again.
The Supreme Court’s verdict recognizing Rishi Kattel-led NCP as the authentic one, has also declared the unified status of then Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) UML and United Communist Party of Nepal (UCPN) Maoist void reviving those parties.
The SC has concluded that the unification and the new name given to the unified party both did not go with the provisions relating to the formation of the political parties.
In other words, the court has rejected the decision of the Election Commission (EC) to register the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) after their unification.
Following the court’s decision, the incumbent government has become a coalition government of then CPN UML and UCPN Maoist formed under Article 76(2) of the Constitution.
Interestingly, Prime Minister KP Oli was elected as PM as per the provisions of Article 76(2).
The court has also issued an order not to go against the laws and regulations related to political parties in the days ahead.
The CPN UML and UCPN Maoist were not formally united at the time of the election of House of Representatives and Province Assembly. Rather, they had formed an internal alliance and assisted each other in various constituencies.
Those parties had declared unification six months after the unification and named their new party Nepal Communist Party (NCP).
Rishi Kattel had protested against the new name of those parties claiming it matched with his NCP; however, the EC had refuted Kattel’s claim saying the unified party’s name was spelled differently.
The party led by Rishi Kattel is named Nepal Communist Party (N C P) whereas Oli-Prachanda led unified party was named Nepal Communist Party (NCP) without space between the letters in the N C P. Kattel had filed a writ in Supreme Court against the EC’s decision.
The SC verdict has also eased the impasse EC was facing.
In the House of Representatives there are 121 lawmakers from CPN UML and 53 from UCPN Maoist.
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