The main opposition Nepali Congress (NC) has issued whip on its lawmakers to not vote for Prime Minister (PM) Pushpa Kamal Dahal during the floor test on Wednesday.
Chief Whip of the grand old party Ramesh Lekhak has issued whip on Monday instructing the lawmakers to not provide vote of confidence for the Dahal government.
PM Dahal has decided to take the floor test in the House of Representatives (HoR) on Wednesday after the biggest party in the previous coalition, NC, withdrew its support for the government.
NC has 88 HoR members.
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 on March 3 agreed to form a new ruling coalition. CPN (Unified Socialist) has also joined the coalition since then.
The previous 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.
UML has 79 seats in the House of Representatives (HoR), Maoist Center 32, RSP 21, JSP 12, and Unified Socialist 10 and they comfortably cross the 138 seats necessary to form the government.
