A gathering of Nepali Congress leaders close to senior leader Ram Chandra Poudel on Tuesday called on the party leadership to hold a meeting of the NC Central Working Committee immediately for assessing the results of the local level elections and charting out a strategy for the upcoming federal and provincial polls.

A Poudel supporter said that a gathering at the faction’s contact office in Anamnagar on Tuesday decided to press the Congress leadership to summon a meeting of the party’s CWC immediately after Dashain, blaming the leadership of party President and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba for the party’s dismal results in the local elections.

The faction held the Congress leadership responsible for the party’s position after the CPN-UML in the local elections. Some of the weaknesses that the Poudel faction pointed out are the NC’s inability to tackle the UML’s poll strategy, a series of scandals and controversies involving the NC ahead of the polls and the failure of the party establishment to field right candidates, according to a leader.

In the meeting, they demanded formation of a parliamentary committee to finalise candidates for the federal and provincial elections in order to have enough time for campaigning and also to bridge intra-party rift.According to the NC charter, all the candidacies for the federal and provincial parliaments are picked by the parliamentary committee.