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Nepal's ruling coalition partners decide to finalise Cabinet expansion

The election commission granted official recognition to the newly-formed party CPN

sherbahaf Sher Bhadur Deuba | Twitter

Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on Sunday met CPN (Maoist Center) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and CPN (Unified Socialist) chief Madhav Kumar Nepal and reached an agreement with them to finalise the expansion of the Cabinet on Monday, according to a media report.

Deuba could not expand his Cabinet for more than a month as the Madhav Nepal faction of the CPN-UML, which played a key role in the formation of the government, was in the process of getting recognition from the election commission.

The election commission granted official recognition to the newly-formed party CPN (Unified Socialist), which was created after splitting the CPN-UML led by former prime minister K P Sharma Oli.

According to Dahal’s Secretariat, the three senior leaders discussed the issue of expanding the Deuba-led Cabinet. An agreement was reached to finalise the expansion of the cabinet on Monday, myrepulica.com reported.

Deuba and Dahal had held a separate discussion on the matter on Saturday.

Nepal, a former prime minister, had gone against the party and supported the then Opposition alliance in its bid to topple the government led by Oli.

Nepal could from a new party after President Bidya Devi Bhandari issued an ordinance to amend the Political Parties Act 2071, aimed at easing the procedure for political parties to split.

The ordinance recently amended by the Deuba-led government has a provision to register a new party if the splinter faction secures the signature of 20 per cent of either central committee members or Parliamentary Party members.

Before the amendment, provisions of the Political Party Act required dissidents to have the support of 40 per cent of members in the parliamentary party and the central committee to split their mother party.

Prime Minister Deuba had earlier announced to allot six ministerial berths and “two more ministries if necessary” to the newly-formed CPN (Unified Socialist) party.

But the party has found it quite difficult to choose leaders from his party for ministerial berths in the Deuba-led government as there are too many aspirants.

A meeting of the CPN-(Unified Socialist) party later decided to form an interim high command and join the government until the office-bearers are selected from the national council.

According to Mukunda Neupane, the names of the party’s leaders who will be joining the government will be selected by the high command.

Deuba has another coalition partner, Janata Samajbadi Party, that is also looking for some ministerial berths.

For more than six weeks, Deuba has been running the government with five ministers. Deuba himself is leading 17 ministries

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