Nepal Communist Party’s executive chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ was on Wednesday elected as the ruling party’s new parliamentary leader, replacing Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.
The 66-year-old leader’s nomination was proposed by senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal, who was earlier named as one of the two chairmen of the party, at a parliamentary party meeting of the Prachanda-led faction at the Parliament Building in New Baneshwar, My Republica reported.
Oli, 68, was removed from the post of party’s chairman on Tuesday by a central committee meeting of the Prachanda-led faction, which also decided to take disciplinary action against him for dissolving the House of Representatives unconstitutionally.
Prachanda said that his first priority would be to restore the dissolved House of Representatives and form a new government.
“I will unify all the democratic forces and political parties to keep the hard-won political system and parliament lively and functioning,” he said.
He thanked lawmakers for electing him as the parliamentary leader and said that he has been handed over a huge responsibility during this challenging time.
Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court forwarded all the writ petitions against Prime Minister Oli’s move to dissolve Parliament to a Constitutional bench.
Chief Justice Cholendra SJB Rana’s single bench passed the order after a preliminary hearing on the 12 different writ petitions filed against the dissolution of the House of Representatives, the paper reported.
The Constitutional bench will start the hearing on Friday. The bench is led by Chief Justice Rana and will have four other justices who will be picked by him.
Although the petitioners demanded an interim order against the decision, the apex court has refused to issue any such order.
Meanwhile, leaders of the Prachanda-led faction have told the Election Commission that they hold a two-thirds majority in the party and therefore they must be granted official recognition by the election body, the paper said.