A day after the two top leaders of the left alliance—CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Centre)—finalised the issues of power sharing for party merger, they decided to call a meeting of the Party Unity Coordination Committee (PUCC) to formalise the deal.

After an hour-long meeting on Tuesday, UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli and Maoist Centre Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal decided to formalise the agreement through the PUCC.

“The committee meeting will formalise the issues agreed by the two top leaders as well as discuss other outstanding issues for party unity,” said Maoist Centre leader and PUCC member Narayan Kaji Shrestha.

Oli and Dahal want to finalise the major issues concerning the party merger ahead of the formation of a new government.

The PUCC meeting is expected to take place at 2pm Wednesday.

Earlier on Monday, Oli and Dahal had agreed to share the leadership of the unified party as co-chairs—both the leaders having equal status. They have also allegedly agreed to share the prime ministerial post by dividing the five years term into two parts. 

The two leaders wanted to keep their agreement on government power sharing a secret. However, Dahal’s announcement, at a function in Chitwan on Tuesday, that he would be visiting the district as the prime minister suggests that he and Oli are planning to take turns on the prme minister’s chair.

The other agreement reached between Oli and Dahal is forming a new ideological ground for the unified outfit, likely to be named Communist Party of Nepal, based on UML’s Peoples multi-party democracy and Maoist Centre’s Maoism.

It has been learnt that Oli, who wanted both prime minister’s and new party chairman’s posts, agreed on sharing power with Dahal because he was under pressure from the leaders of his own party, including Madhav Kumar Nepal, Jhala Nath Khanal and Bamdev Gautam, to hand over the reins of the new party to Dahal.