Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and senior leader Jhala Nath Khanal have gone to meet other Chairman and Prime Minister (PM) KP Sharma Oli after resuming the standing committee meeting in Oli's absence.
Rivals of Oli earlier resumed the party's standing committee meeting at his residence in Baluwatar on Tuesday after he unilaterally postponed it for indefinite period earlier on the day. Dahal and Khanal went to meet Oli stopping the meeting for a while.
A meeting of senior leaders Jhala Nath Khanal and Madhav Kumar Nepal, Spokesperson Narayan Kaji Shrestha and Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal at the latter's residence in Khumaltar on Monday had concluded that the standing committee meeting should not be stopped. Dahal also talked with Vice-chairman Bam Dev Gautam and Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa after the meeting.
Dahal, Khanal, Nepal, Shrestha and other standing committee members had reached Baluwatar despite Oli postponing it. Dahal has resumed meeting after other standing committee members also reached Baluwatar.
"Our meeting continues. 25 standing committee members are attending the meeting," Khanal told Setopati. The standing committee is 44-strong.
Oli, meanwhile, is consulting standing committee members close to him in Baluwatar.
The Oli faction claims that he postponed the standing committee meeting after waiting for Dahal, who was scheduled to turn up at nine in the morning, for over one and a half hours.
The meeting scheduled to resume at 11 Tuesday morning was earlier postponed indefinitely by Oli.
The standing committee meeting that started on June 24 has been repeatedly postponed to try to resolve the internal dispute in the party.
It was stalled since July 2 and had finally resumed last Tuesday following multiple postponements. But it was soon postponed by a week citing the floods and landslides across the country.
Dahal and fellow Chairman KP Sharma Oli have met only once in the past week while Dahal and Nepal have met multiple times during the period. The anti-Oli faction, that has demanded that he should resign from one of the two positions of party chairman and prime minister, have talked about continuing the standing committee meeting even in absence of Oli.
