Nepal’s two largest communist parties on Thursday decided to settle all contentious issues ahead of their merger after Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli returns from his official visit to India.

The Party Unity Co-ordination Committee (PUCC) took this decision at a meeting held at Oli’s official residence in Baluwatar.PUCC is the apex panel of the CPN-UML and the CPN (Maoist Centre) with the mandate to finalise their merger.

The panel decided that both parties go ahead with internal preparations to announce a merged party named Communist Party of Nepal on April 22.The two task forces led by Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa and UML senior leader Madhav Nepal had suggested that the PUCC announce the merger of the two parties on April 22, the founding day of the first Communist Party of Nepal almost 70 years ago.

The task forces had submitted their reports without settling a few crucial issues. 

The PUCC next meets on April 10 after PM Oli returns to Kathmandu on April 9. The meeting will settle all pending issues the two task forces failed to resolve.

PUCC member Jhalanath Khanal said the unification of two communist parties would take place in a cordial manner by managing all the leaders of both the parties. He did not elaborate ‘how the leaders would be managed’. Senior Maoist Centre leader and PUCC member Narayan Kaji Shrestha said the meeting decided to announce the parties’ merger at a grand mass meeting on April 22.

The brief meeting of the PUCC did not dwell on contentious issues including the ratio of sharing power in the committees of the unified party, the new election symbol and the use of ‘people’s war’ in new party’s statute. UML leaders have doubt equal share as a faction of the party has expressed reservations. They said the party could accept 60:40 ratio of sharing.

A member of the task force formed to draft the unified party’s statute Beduram Bhusal said the word ‘people’s war’ could be included in the new party’s statute in such a way that the war was waged by the then Maoists, but UML may not compromise on ‘Sun’ as new party’s election symbol.CPN-UML has called its last politburo meeting on April 19 and the last central committee meeting on April 20.The Maoist Centre has not announced the date of its last meeting.