The selection of the party leader of the Nepali Congress has been delayed due to internal disputes after the leaders of the parliamentary parties of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, UML, NCP and RPP have been selected. Although it is certain that party chairman Harkaraj Rai (Sampang) will be the party leader from the Labor Culture, a decision is yet to be made. The parliament is starting from Thursday.

Senior leaders and MPs have been claiming that the party leader and whip have an important role in the parliament. Senior leader of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Balendra Shah, has been elected as the party leader and has taken over the charge of the Prime Minister. The Rashtrapati Bhavan is currently working on the selection of the deputy leader, chief whip and whip. The Rashtrapati Bhavan has stated that it will move forward on other issues after finalizing the Speaker and Deputy Speaker. After the Speaker from the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Deputy Speaker will have to be given to another party.

‘One of the Speaker and Deputy Speakers of the House of Representatives shall be a woman, and the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives shall be representatives of different parties,’ the constitution states. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) shall support the candidates of the Congress, UML, NCP, Shram Sankrit or RPP who are in the parliament for the post of Deputy Speaker. There has been talk of Samiksha Baskota, Chief Whip Kabindra Burlakoti, and Whip Nisha Dangi as the deputy leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), but no decision has been made. ‘The process of selecting other posts in the parliament will move forward after the Speaker and Deputy Speaker are decided,’ said an RSS official.

The internal dispute in the Congress has delayed the selection of the party’s parliamentary party leader. Since the Congress has not selected the parliamentary party leader, there is confusion among the lawmakers about who will speak in the meeting on Thursday in the party capacity. The internal dispute in the Congress, which started immediately after the election, has not yet subsided. The then acting president Purna Bahadur Khadka, from the group of then president Sher Bahadur Deuba, has been running the party's parallel activities. Leader Shekhar Koirala and his supporters are also in the same group.

Conflict is increasing within the Congress as the old establishment faction does not accept the existence of the Central Working Committee that emerged from the special general convention. Congress leaders believe that the selection of the parliamentary party leader has been affected for this reason. General Secretary Gururaj Ghimire, however, says that there has been some delay in the selection of the party leader due to other preoccupations in the party's organizational work. He said that a meeting of the party's Central Working Committee has been called for next Saturday to move forward the process of selecting the party leader.

'The meeting will form an election committee, after which the process of selecting the party leader will move forward,' Ghimire said. The establishment faction wants the party leader to be selected unanimously in a situation where the party has become weak. However, the Deuba faction is indicating that the party leader may be selected from its group. In doing so, the name of the then Joint General Secretary Bhishma Angdambe is in the news from the Deuba faction. Angdambe wants to play a moderate role in the dispute within the party. Another official said that this role could lead to consensus in his name.

Among the leaders in favor of the special general convention, the names of Arjun Narsingh KC, Bharat Bahadur Khadka and Mohan Acharya are also in the news for the party leader. KC is not only the senior member of the Congress but also of the parliament. Being the senior member, he will preside over the parliament until the election of the speaker. KC had expressed his desire for the party leader some time ago.

He said that since he is in the role of presiding over the parliament, he will not talk about things within the party. ‘I will talk about what to do as the party leader after I return from my parliamentary duties, I cannot say now when I am in a different position,’ he said. Since there is a majority of youth in the parliament, the Congress is also lobbying to make young MP Niskal Rai the party leader instead of the old leaders.

UML on Wednesday elected Vice President Ram Bahadur Thapa as the party leader unopposed. The parliamentary party meeting elected Thapa as the party leader. But this has created controversy in the UML. MP Suhang Nembang had also put forward a claim to the party leader. ‘To end this disappointment and frustration within the party, I have dared to claim the party leader even if it is by drinking poison,’ he said.

Election Officer Neeraj Acharya informed that it was unopposed as no one else except Vice President Thapa had registered his candidacy. ‘MP Suhang had also taken the form for candidacy but did not submit it,’ he said, ‘Since only Vice President Thapa was nominated, he was elected as the party leader unopposed.’

Despite efforts to make Thapa a unanimous candidate in the secretariat, Suhang refused. In the meeting, Suhang had demanded that the party leader be selected through the electoral process. But the MPs present in the meeting did not propose or support Suhang. 25 MPs from the House of Representatives and 10 MPs from the National Assembly were present in the meeting.

After Thapa was elected as the party leader, Deputy Secretary General Yogesh Bhattarai expressed his disagreement with the process, saying that strong unity should be built through a comprehensive reorganization of the UML and public trust should be aroused. ‘The method and style adopted to select the leader of the UML parliamentary party has made the entire party line more worried,’ he said. ‘Instead of reaching a high-level understanding through discussions between the party leadership and honorable MPs over a few days, what was done by putting pressure on the MPs was not good.’