The unified Communist Party of Nepal will have six layers of executive committees, a member of the task force headed by Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa (Maoist Centre) that is overseeing the final organisational structure of the new party said on Monday.

“The new party would have six layers of executive committees,” said UML leader Surendra Pande who is part of Thapa-led task force.

UML senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal heads the other task force.

This plan will be put forward to the Party Unity Co-ordination Committee of the left alliance.

This move is significant as the merger of two major communist parties of the country—CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Centre)—enters the final stage.

The six layers include Central Committee; Provincial Committees; District Committees; Rural/Municipal Committees; Ward Committees and Preliminary Committees. Wards have now been made larger by merging previous smaller wards after the country adopted federal structure. These wards would also have executive committees. Earlier, municipality managed a town while Village Development Committee (VDC) oversaw the affairs at the village level. The VDC is now turned into rural municipality by merging different VDCs. A ward in Nepal is the smallest unit of governance at the local level.

As per the proposal, the tenure of the Central Committee will be five years; provincial committees for four years; district committees for three years, Rural/Municipal Committees for two years and ward committees for one year. The task force is still mulling whether to have two different co-ordination committees for the purpose of elections—the Federal Constituencies Co-ordination Committee for federal polls and Provincial Constituencies Co-ordination Committee for the polls of provincial assemblies. Both these committees shall be under the respective district committees. These committees would function only as co-ordination bodies for the polls.

Since the politburo and the standing committee would be formed among the central committee members these committees would act as co-ordinating body rather than executive one, said Pande.

If all these non-executive committees were counted, the party would possess ten layers of structure.

Currently Maoist Centre has party secretariat, standing committee, politburo and general convention organising committee of around 4,000 members. The UML has systematic committees—standing, politburo, central, provincial, district, election constituencies coordination, ward and preliminary ‘tole’ committees. The panel has formed a sub-committee comprising Gokarna Bista and Giriraj Mani Pokhrel to finalise a way to merge sister organisations of both the parties.

Pande further said the concept of National Council was also under discussion as honorary structure to accommodate other leaders that could be a large structure at the centre.

The task force has not finalised the structure of the officer bearers that would be the top leadership above the standing committee. The task force is discussing several options.

Thapa’s task force has sought 10 more days to complete its task.  Both the task forces were given the deadline of March 9. The task forces have ample time for discussions before submitting their report as the two parties plan to announce the merger on April 22.