The ruling coalition between Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN (Maoist Center) has broken giving way to a new coalition of the Maoists with the main opposition CPN-UML.
The meeting between Maoist Chairman and Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli, Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) President Rabi Lamichhane and Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) Chairman Upendra Yadav held at Baluwatar Sunday night agreed to form a new ruling coalition.
UML has 79 seats in the House of Representatives (HoR), Maoist Center 32, and RSP 21, and JSP 12, and the four parties together can muster the 138 seats necessary to form the government.
PM Dahal is expected to recall all the current ministers in the government and form a new Cabinet including a minister each from all the four parties.
CPN (Unified Socialist), formed after splitting from UML, has also been given an option of joining the new coalition, according to a leader.
The current coalition was formed around a year ago before the election for president after Dahal broke the then coalition with UML. NC, Maoist Center, JSP and Unified Socialist had then decided to revive the pre-election alliance.
Dahal had quit the pre-election alliance with NC and Unified Socialist on December 25, 2022 and became prime minister (PM) with support of CPN-UML, Rastriya Swatantra Party, RPP, Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP), Janamat Party and Nagarik Unmukti Party after Nepali Congress (NC) President Sher Bahadur Deuba refused to make him PM first.
Oli had assured NC that UML will not ally with Maoist Center at any cost and would instead ally with NC to form the new government to encourage Deuba to break the agreement to make Dahal PM first.
