Nepal floor test: 3 Opposition parties to not vote in favour of K P Sharma Oli

Kathmandu: Ahead of Sunday's floor test for the newly sworn-in Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli, the party he broke away with and two other political outfits have announced to vote against him.

Oli succeeded Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda,' who lost the vote of confidence in the House of Representatives (HoR) last week after Oli's Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) withdrew support and joined hands with the Nepali Congress (NC), the largest party in Parliament, apart from other smaller parties.

The 72-year-old veteran Communist leader, who was sworn in on Monday as the Himalayan nation’s Prime Minister for the fourth time, will be taking the vote of confidence in parliament on Sunday.

The three Opposition parties -- Prachanda's Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre (CPN-MC), Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), and Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Socialist (CPN-US) -- held a joint meeting on Friday and decided not to support Oli in the vote of confidence.

"Prachanda, RSP president Rabi Lamichhane, and Unified Socialist chair Madhav Kumar Nepal, after a discussion at Singha Durbar, made the decision," The Kathmandu Post newspaper said quoting Ramesh Malla, personal secretary to Prachanda.

However, even when these parties have a combined 62 seats in the House of Representatives (HoR), the CPN-UML and NC-led coalition does not face a threat as the two parties had together submitted signatures of 165 HoR members of their own while staking claim last week.

Moreover, on July 15, when Oli and the cabinet were sworn in, there were members from the Janata Samajwadi Party and the Loktantrik Samajwadi Party too taking oath, all put together, way more than the minimum 138 required in the 275-strong HoR for proving the majority.

Incidentally, the Supreme Court of Nepal has set July 21 as the date for a preliminary hearing for a writ petition challenging Oli’s appointment arguing that it was unconstitutional and seeking its annulment.

Within hours of Oli's swearing-in, three advocates -- Deepak Adhikari, Khagendra Prasad Chapagain and Shailendra Kumar Gupta – had filed the writ petition arguing that the president should call for the formation of a new government under Article 76 (3) if a government formed as per Article 76 (2) fails the floor test in the House of Representatives.

Nepal has faced frequent political turmoil as the country has seen 14 governments in the past 16 years after the Republican system was introduced.