Deputy General Secretary of CPN (Maoist Center) Janardan Sharma has proposed to change the party’s name citing difficulty in expanding party organization in the urban areas including Kathmandu.
“The name is right seen from the eyes of Rukum, Rolpa, Karnali, Gorkha but it is necessary to change the name as it is essential to expand the party in urban areas including Kathmandu with the largest population,” Sharma has stated presenting the proposal during the party’s statute convention that started on Tuesday.
Sharma had also pointed during the central committee meeting held on Sunday that Maoist Center failed to become popular in the Kathmandu Valley due to activities including trying to change priests at the Pashupatinath Temple when Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal first became prime minister (PM) in 2008. The Dahal government had eventually stepped back from the step to appoint a Nepali as the head priest removing the Indian one after widespread criticism.
Presenting an eight-point supplementary proposal in the statute convention Sharma has also demanded that committees and office-bearers at all the party levels should be directly elected.
The proposed party statute, however, states that 51 percent of the committees should be elected directly and 49 through the proportional representation system.
Maoist Center has been mulling change of its name for a long time now. The meeting of party’s office-bearers on September 11, 2023 had decided to instruct cadres to start discussion for changing name and take decision to change the party’s name in the next general convention.
The party had earlier given up Maoist from the name while unifying with CPN-UML to form CPN in May 2018 but the Supreme Court (SC) invalidated the unification restoring the two parties to the state before unification.
Maoist Center had tried to form socialist center by unifying with other communist parties before the last general election and had even held discussion for that with CPN (Unified Socialist) and Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) but to no avail. A few Maoist leaders had proposed changing the party’s name and election symbol at that time.
Nepal Samajwadi Party Chairman Baburam Bhattarai had also put the condition of changing the party’s name for unification with Maoist Center.
The party has concluded that people associated the party with its violent past when it is named Maoist Center and decided to change the party’s name to give a message that the erstwhile rebels have changed their ways now.
