Maoist Centre took a moral stand by withdrawing support to PM: Nepali Congress 

Nepali Congress (NC) lawmaker and Opposition leader Pradeep Giri told WION that CPN (Maoist Centre) led by Pushpakamal Dahal “Prachanda" took a “moral stand” by officially withdrawing support to Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli-led government. 

With this move, PM Oli-led government lost the majority in the House of Representatives. 

“Politically, Nepal is facing a lot of problems. The CPN-Maoists Centre did an ideal thing by withdrawing their support to PM Oli. The party was anyway dissolved by the Supreme Court and returned to its pre-merger state,” Giri told WION. 

The Maoist Centre submitted a letter to this effect to the Parliament Secretariat on Wednesday, informing about its decision to withdraw support to the government, according to a senior leader of the party, Ganesh Shah.

“The move has no justification. Maoist has been criticizing, exposing the Oli-Led government for a year now, so it did not make sense for them to still support the party,” the leader added. 

The decision of the Maoist party to withdraw support to the government comes two days after Oli announced that he will seek a vote of confidence in Parliament on May 10.

The House of Representatives will decide the fate of Oli if he continues to reign or loses power. 

The UML and the Maoist Centre had merged in May 2018 to form the Nepal Communist Party (NCP).

It is now to be seen whether the prime minister will be able to whip a majority by forging another alliance, if the opposition alliance gathers enough numbers to topple the incumbent government and replace it with a new one, or if the country is headed towards an election if both the previous options fail to materialise.

The Maoist Centre has a total of 49 lawmakers in the lower house. Since the ruling CPN-UML has a total of 121 lawmakers, Prime Minister Oli is short of 15 lawmakers to save his government in the 275-member House.