The second day of the first unity convention of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) saw a heated debate among leaders from former RPP and RPP-Nepal over the electoral symbol. 

The faction close to Pashupati Shumsher Rana and Prakash Chandra Lohani, who are from former RPP, made a pitch for retaining plough as the electoral symbol, while those from the Kamal Thapa’s RPP-Nepal sought to continue to with the cow electoral symbol. Another issue that dominated the discussion was whether the office bearers should be elected or nominated. 

The Lohani faction has been demanding elections of at least one third of 29-member Office Bearer. The other faction is claiming that since the Office Bearer members should be nominated by the elected chairman of the party. 

According to the party statute presented for discussion, as many as 3,470 representatives will elect 70 percent of the 161-member Central Working Committee members while the 29 office bearers and remaining 30 percent of the CWC members will be nominated by the chairman. 

“Nominating office bearers [by the chairman] is not a democratic process,” a party leader quoted Lohani as saying. However, cadres in large numbers voiced against him, claiming that the Lohani faction was trying to bring division by raising those issues which were settled before the two parties merged in November last year to become the RPP. They claimed that there was agreement during the merger that the electoral symbol and the flag of RPP-N would be retained for the unified party in return for retaining the old party’s name—RPP—for the unified party.

However, Lohani, who has announced that he will run for chairmanship against Thapa, claimed that it was agreed that the issue would be resolved from the convention. “The Lohani faction is raising unnecessary issues, causing a division in the party,” a leader quoted representative Basant Singh Adhikari as saying. The election process was scheduled for Saturday evening, but it failed to start till late night following the dispute.