Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) and RPP (Sanyukta) have agreed to keep plough as the election symbol of the new party over six months after announcing unification.
The three co-chairmen of RPP Kamal Thapa, Pashupati Shumsher Rana and Prakash Chandra Lohani on Sunday agreed to make plough the election symbol of unified party after bickering about whether of keep the erstwhile symbol of Thapa-led RPP, cow, or that of RPP (Sanyukta) led by Rana and Lohani, plough, as the election symbol.
The unified party has yet to be registered at the Election Commission due to the dispute about the election symbol.
RPP leader Mohan Shrestha told Setopati that the working committees of the two parties decided to make plough the election symbol on Monday as per the agreement reached between the three chairmen on Sunday. "We discussed the issue on our respective working committees on Monday. The joint working committee of the two parties on Tuesday will now endorse it," Shrestha stated.
He claimed that the Thapa-led RPP agreed to replace the election symbol as not doing so threatened to derail the unification process.
He added that the two parties have agreed to keep the erstwhile registration of RPP and amend the party statute, raise the number of central members to 327 from 165, and replace cow with plough as the election symbol.
He revealed that the two parties have also agreed to hold the general convention of the unified party in the first week of May 2021.
"Cow is the appropriate election symbol for RPP with the agenda of Hindus state. But the compromise was mandatory to save party unification. I appeal to the friends/well-wishers of the party to take this situational compulsion in an easy manner," Thapa has tweeted on Tuesday. "Let's start the campaign to make RPP a strong nationalist and democratic party."
The two parties had announced unification on the agenda of Hindu state with Thapa and Rana exchanging unification letters amidst a program in Kathmandu on March 11. Thapa, Rana and Lohani were announced as co-chairmen of the new party to be named RPP but no agreement was reached on the new party's flag and election symbol then.
A press statement issued jointly by the three leaders after agreeing for unification then had stated that they have opted for unification as the people have felt a need for presence of a political force standing on the foundation of nationalism and democracy when corruption, proselytization and unemployment remain as the major problems in the country, big political parties sell the dreams to the people but do nothing and are submerged in corruption for self-interest, and the main opposition party also remains ineffective and helpless.
