Do not want to topple Deuba govt: Prachanda

Kathmandu, October 8 

Nepal’s Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ has said his party does not intend to topple the Deuba government even though it has formed an electoral alliance with the opposition CPN-UML.

Addressing the Parliamentary Party yesterday, the former Prime Minister said the CPN (Maoist Centre), however, would quit the government if Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba wants so, the Kathmandu Post reported.

Prachanda’s Maoist Centre is key coalition partner of the Deuba government and it has been facing criticism for staying in the government despite forging an alliance with the main opposition.

“We are not for affecting the polls by toppling the government. However, if the PM and his party, the Nepali Congress, ask us to leave, we won’t continue in the government,” he said, adding that the party’s “only mission at this time is both federal and provincial polls on scheduled dates”.

Prachanda’s Maoist party on October 3 announced an alliance with the country’s largest communist bloc CPN-UML, ahead of key elections seen as the final step in the Himalayan nation’s post-war transition to a federal democracy. The two parties, with a third smaller partner Naya Shakti Nepal, have agreed a tie-up for the general elections later this year, and plan to unify as a single communist party following the polls.

Prachanda, however, told his party members on Saturday that there were “some procedural lapses” while taking the decision of forging a alliance with the CPN-UML and the Naya Shakti Nepal. He admitted that forging the alliance without putting the matter for discussion at any of the committees of the party was a mistake. — PTI