Parties fail to form consensus govt

Parties fail to form consensus govt
KATHMANDU: The major three parties --UCPN-Maoist, Nepali Congress and CPN-UML--failed to forge national consensus on the formation of new goverment at the last day of the deadline on Monday.

The extended deadline to form the national consensus government is expiring at 5 p.m. this afternoon.

The joint meeting of the parties held at the Constituent Assembly premises in Kathmandu this afternoon, however, decided to make further efforts to build up consensus even if the deadline to form national consensus government expires technically after a few hours.

Top leaders of the parties including Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, NC acting president Sushil Koirala and UML chairman Jhala Nath Khanal had taken taking part in the meeting.

Emerging from the meeting, UML chairman Khanal said the three parties will carry on their efforts to form national consensus government in the days to come even though they failed to forge consensus to meet today’s deadline.

“Though the process of forming new government will see a majority-oriented system from today,” he said, “We have decided to opt for forging consensus.”

The attempts to forge consensus could not materiliase as the NC and UML disagreed with the Maoist action plan over contentious issues including army integration.

According to him, the parties still have differences over the army integration including its modality and the number of combatants to be integrated.