Executive Chairman of CPN Pushpa Kamal Dahal has gone to ministerial quarter in Pulchowk to woo Home Minister and CPN secretariat member Ram Bahadur Thapa on Tuesday.
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 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.
Thapa has yet to formally decide which faction to join especially after his confidants on Monday advised him to resign from the Cabinet.
Dahal during the meeting on Tuesday urged Thapa to join the Dahal-Nepal faction and relayed the decisions taken after different meetings on Monday. Thapa, in response, said he will soon take a decision.
Sources close to Thapa confide that he has been holding consultation even on Tuesday. "We are still in consultation. We discussed with a few friends yesterday. We will take collective decision after consulting friends across the country. We have yet to decide which of the meetings to attend," a source stated.
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.