Kathmandu, Nepal: Supreme Court of Nepal on Sunday quashed the unification of the former Communist Party of Nepal (CPN-UML) led by Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli and the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Center (CPN-Maoist) led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda’.
The Supreme Court of Nepal on Sunday has awarded the party name “Nepal Communist Party” to Rishiram Kattel, according to the court document.
The verdict was issued by a division bench of justices Bam Kumar Shrestha and Kumar Regmi on Sunday.
The bench has said that a new party cannot be registered with the Election Commission when it already has a party registered with a similar name.
With this decision of the Supreme Court, the CPN (Maoist) led by KP Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda has been disbanded.
On October 26, 2018, the Election Commission had granted unified parties CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre to the name “Nepal Communist Party (NCP)”.
Rishi Kattel, led CPN-UML party leader had challenged the Election Commission’s decision to register Nepal Communist Party (NCP) under Oli and Prachanda in May 2018.
Kattel, who filed an application petition at the court against Election Commission granting the name to the unified party. He claimed that the “Nepal Communist Party (NCP)” already belonged to his name.
Almost three years ago, the Election Commission had rejected Kattel’s application to not grant the name NCP (NCP) to the unified party.
With this Court decision, the 2018 unification between the CPN-UML and Maoist Centre is no longer legally recognised, and the two parties are still in existence as separate elements.
Following the court’s decision, the incumbent government has become a coalition government of then CPN UML and UCPN Maoist formed under Article 76(2) of the Constitution.
In the 2017 elections, the UML had won 121 seats and the Maoist Centre 53.
The CPN UML and UCPN Maoist were not formally united at the time of the election of House of Representatives and Province Assembly. Rather, they had formed an internal alliance and assisted each other in various constituencies.
Those parties had declared unification six months after the unification and named their new party Nepal Communist Party (NCP).
Rishi Kattel had protested against the new name of those parties claiming it matched with his NCP; however, the EC had refuted Kattel’s claim saying the unified party’s name was spelled differently.
The party led by Rishi Kattel is named Nepal Communist Party (N C P) whereas Oli-Prachanda led unified party was named Nepal Communist Party (NCP) without space between the letters in the N C P. Kattel had filed a writ in Supreme Court against the EC’s decision.
Read Court Decision (Full Text):
Source: News Agencies
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