Five parties in the ruling coalition have signed a seven-point agreement.
The meeting of top leaders of CPN-UML, CPN (Maoist Center) Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) and CPN (Unified Socialist) at Baluwatar on Tuesday has signed the agreement.
Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli also held discussion with Unified Socialist Chairman Madhav Kumar Nepal before signing the latest agreement. Unified Socialist on Monday warned that the party would not vote for ruling coalition candidate in the election for National Assembly chair and for the government during the floor test if Prime Minister Dahal does not sign a written deal with the party.
Four of those parties had signed an eight-point agreement on March 4 and they have now signed the latest agreement after Unified Socialist, formed after splitting from UML, joined the new coalition.
The seven points in the agreement include supporting the government led by Prime Minister (PM) Pushpa Kamal Dahal and making it successful, electing Narayan Prasad Dahal of Maoist Center National Assembly chair, and initiating dialogue with other parties about the process of forming the new government among others.
The eight-point agreement signed by the four parties earlier had also mentioned that UML would get vice-chair of the National Assembly but the latest agreement does not mention so.
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.
PM Dahal has decided to take floor test on Wednesday.
