Nine months after the unification, the fourth task force formed to complete the task of unifying remaining structures of the two parties of the Nepal Communist Party, has failed to take decision due to factional disputes.

After failing to take any concrete decision on unification of the party committees, sources claimed the Ram Bahadur Thapa-led nine-member task force is preparing to hand over its report, along with the disputes, to the two chairpersons of the party on Friday.

With the ‘high-level and powerful’ task force with the authority even to make changes in the provincial committees and recommending politburo members failing to resolve the pending issues will further escalate the existing internal conflicts besides delaying the party’s unification process. The Madhav Nepal faction has said the disputes should be taken to the standing committee and not the secretariat while chairpersons KP Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal were for resolving the issue from the secretariat. Nepal has even raised concern that the delay in party unification could lead to a situation where the government might struggle to defend its moves.

“The task force has not taken any decision. So what is there to submit,” asked a task force member Beduram Bhusal adding that the standing committee had formed it and therefore the panel was accountable to it and not the secretariat.

Other leaders, including Ghanashyam Bhusal, said Oli was not interested to form the task force and therefore he did not want to resolve the issues.

With no headway, the panel is preparing to hand over its responsibility to the party chairpersons. They were given the deadline of mid-Jan to complete their job.

“Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa has said the task force will present its report to the party chairpersons on Friday with disputes,” said a standing committee member requesting anonymity. “It failed to make any headway due to differences on provincial committees.”

With both the factions of the erstwhile CPN-UML-one led by Madhav Nepal and the other by Oli-sticking to their stances over the changes in the provincial committees endorsed by the secretariat in Nepal’s absence, the task force has not met for the last

five days.

The Oli faction, along with former Maoist leaders, was adamant about the change claiming that the provincial committees have already started functioning.

Asked about the reasons behind the stalemate, leaders of the Nepal-led faction and Oli-led faction blamed each other for the deadlock.  

The major demand of the Nepal’s faction was either to revise the existing provincial committees or add 10 percent members as per the party statute incorporating the senior leaders of the provinces who were left out.

The Nepal faction have accused that junior leaders of the Oli faction were incorporated in the provincial committees while excluding senior leaders representing their faction.

The latest standing committee meeting that concluded on December 28 had formed the panel led by Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa including Barshaman Pun and Lekhraj Bhatta of former Maoist party, General Secretary Bishnu Poudel, Raghubir Mahasheth and Shankar Pokhrel from the Oli faction, and Yogesh Bhattarai, Surendra Pande and Beduram Bhusal representing the Nepal faction.

When Oli was in Davos, senior leaders including co-chair Dahal, senior leaders Madhav Nepal, Jhalanath Khanal, Bamdev Gautam and spokesperson Narayan Kaji Shrestha had discussed at an undisclosed location in Jhamsikhel on January 24 and had decided to expedite the unification process at the earliest.

The standing committee had decided to complete the unification process by mid-January and hold the gatherings of all the lower committees by mid-February and run a two-month-long national campaign until mid-April.