Leaders close to Home Minister and CPN secretariat member Ram Bahadur Thapa have advised him to resign from the Cabinet.
Thapa, who became minister on Maoist quota, has grown close to Prime Minister (PM) KP Sharma Oli after becoming minister and had not resigned when seven ministers close to CPN Chairman and former Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Senior Leader Madhav Kumar Nepal resigned on Sunday leading to speculation that he may have joined the Oli camp.
But Thapa did not attend the meeting of Oli's faction at Baluwatar Monday morning and held a separate meeting of his faction in Pulchowk.
"We all have told him that we should oppose the step the PM has taken now. We all have unanimously said that we should oppose that," CPN central member Dilip Prajapati said after the meeting. "Thapa comrade said he will take the next step after discussion."
Another central member Lekhnath Neupane said that Thapa has assured to make his position clear by Monday evening holding discussion throughout the day.
"We have advised him to resign. He will speak against the PM's step by the evening," another leader who attended the meeting claimed. "He has said that he is against the step in principle and called the PM's step regression."
Thapa has a small group that had split along with Mohan Baidya from the then Maoists and later returned to the Maoist party led by Dahal. Thapa, Pampha Bhusal and Dev Gurung became CPN standing committee member after unification of the Maoists with the then CPN-UML.
The group currently has around a dozen federal lawmakers and almost three dozen CPN central committee members.
