CPN (Maoist Center) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal is going to Chitwan Thursday afternoon to take part in the council of Bharatpur Metropolitan City to be held on Friday. Dahal's daughter Renu Dahal is mayor in Bharatpur which is his hometown.
Dahal will remain in Chitwan even on Friday and return to Kathmandu only on Saturday, according to his personal secretariat.
The meeting to be held with CPN-UML Chairman KP Oli to discuss unification has become uncertain due to Dahal's Chitwan visit. Dahal is currently taking part in the all-party meeting called by Prime Minister (PM) Sher Bahadur Deuba at the latter's residence in Baluwatar, according to media coordinator of Dahal Manahari Timalsina.
"UML has not invited us for meeting until now. The meeting can take place if they call. It won't happen if they don't," Timalsina stated.
Addressing the headquarters meeting of Maoist Center on Tuesday, Dahal had stated that one party should get to lead the government and the other the unified party after unification. He had told party leaders that he will meet Oli on Wednesday and discuss about the issue. But the two leaders could not meet on Wednesday.
Dahal' s earlier visit to Chitwan on December 22, a day before the meeting of the coordination committee for unification of the two parties, had sowed seeds of suspicions within the left alliance.
UML grew suspicious due to Dahal’s comments while outside Kathmandu during that visit. “We had agreed to take turn to lead the government. I will discuss this issue in the meeting of coordination committee after returning to Kathmandu,” he said in Chitwan.
“UML was thinking about forming the government on its own as election results started to arrive believing that it will get a majority of its own. It started to talk about unification with us only after seeing that Nepali Congress (NC) was getting almost equal votes in proportional representation (PR) system,” he told his cadres in Kawasoti of Nawalparasi.
