Nepali Congress still at it

The truce brokered between the warring sides in the ruling Congress Party has begun to unravel. The two factions are back with what has become their favourite pastime: accusations and counter-accusations. Now it is the election committee formed to hold party polls at the next convention. A dissenting minority in the committee suspect that the membership lists prepared by the party could be faulty and has begun asking that the list be scrutinised by the committee before sending it to the districts. Defeated by majority vote in the committee, which said that that was beyond their authority, two members representing the Bhattarai camp, Bimalendra Nidhi and Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, went to the press.

Adding fuel to the fire came the resignation of Hari Nath Bastola a member of the active membership investigation committee. Bastola accused the committee of not following the decisions of the central working committee (CWC) and the existing rules while preparing the membership list. The list comprises of over 105,000 NC members who will elect delegates to the 10th party Convention to be held in February in Pokhara.

On 1 November four prominent dissidents, Sher Bahadur Deuba, Chiranjivi Wagle, Khum Bahadur Khadka and Bijay Gachhedar, took up the case of Nidhi, Karki and Bastola to castigate the Koirala camp for not abiding by the CWC's decision, and called on their supporters to rally against the "impending division of the party".