Valley
Youth leaders press NC brass for reforms in party
Nepali Congress youth leaders are preparing to exert collective pressures on the NC leadership to take immediate measures to revamp the party structure.Nepali Congress youth leaders are preparing to exert collective pressures on the NC leadership to take immediate measures to revamp the party structure.
The move follows party’s debacle in recently concluded elections to the House of Representatives and provincial assemblies. The NC leadership, mainly Sher Bahadur Deuba, is under pressure to resign as the party chief, taking moral responsibility for the largest party’s humiliating defeat in the elections. Deuba, however, is in no mood to quit in the near future.
A group of youth leaders is preparing to press the NC leadership to take immediate measures. A leader privy to the developments said they will demand an immediate meeting of the party’s Mahasamti meeting. According to the Congress statute, if the Mahasamiti meeting fails to take any decision, a general convention is summoned.
They are of the view that the party’s Central Working Committee should fix the date of the Mahasamiti meeting. The party is preparing to call a CWC meeting within this week. The Mahasamiti is the NC’s policy making body with representation of cadres from the grassroots level. Nabindra Raj Joshi, Gagan Thapa, Badri Pandey, Pradeep Poudel, Govinda Bhattarai and Bishwa Prakash Sharma, among others, are leading the campaign. “We are working to press the leadership to take necessary steps for revamping the party organisation,” said Joshi.
He said youth leaders of the party are preparing to organise a formal gathering within a couple of days. “We are meeting within a couple of days to make our position public,” he said. Youth leaders are of the view that the first step towards reform is ending factional politics that has paralysed the party. According to them, intra-party rift had a key role in the defeat of party’s candidates in some constituencies. Another issue the leaders are highlighting is an inefficient leadership at the centre that failed to mobilised cadres to optimum benefit.
Though the youth leaders are urging the party leadership to step down taking moral responsibility for the defeat, senior Congress leaders do not subscribe to this view. Senior leaders such as Ram Chandra Poudel and General Secretary Shashank Koirala say that all the leaders should be held responsible for the party’s poor showing.
The NC fared poorly in the first-past-the-post elections while the party was neck-to-neck with the CPN-UML in the proportional representation vote for the House of Representatives. “The party president will not step down at this point. First there will be an intensive discussion in the party’s Central Working Committee,” said NC leader Prakash Sharan Mahat.