The Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal, the third largest party in the federal parliament, which has been struggling to convene its first unity national convention ever since it was formed with the merger of six fringe Madhes-based parties two years ago, has been seeking an ‘excuse’ to postpone its scheduled convention.

The party had scheduled the convention for April 20-22, but with less than two weeks left it has not completed preparations for the event yet.

Leaders of the party claimed that the six-member presidium has been seeking ‘an excuse’ to convince the party’s rank and file to postpone the April’s national convention.

However, three senior leaders—Co-chairman Laxman Lal Karna, Vice-chairpersons Brikhesh Chandra Lal and Sarbendra Nath Shukla—have urged the leaders in the party presidium to take a decision through a meeting of the political committee instead of the presidium itself.

Sharat Singh Bhandari is currently coordinating the party’s rotating six-member presidium.

According to party General Secretary Keshav Jha, who is close to Bhandari, the party’s presidium would be held within Tuesday and the presidium will call the meeting of party’s office bearers to take all crucial decisions of the party, including the postponement of the convention.

“The presidium will call the office bearers’ meet which is broader than the political committee,” Jha said. He, however, said the recent party unity with the MS Thapa-led Rastriya Janamukti Party was the major reason behind the delay in preparations.

“A majority of the MS Thapa’s party members have joined the RJP-N under the leadership of its Co-chair Mandhoj Blon, which affected the preparations for the convention,” Jha said, adding that there were other reasons as well that includes the recent disaster in Bara and Parsa. Besides those in the presidium, other party leaders and cadres have been engaged in rescue and relief operations in the two affected districts.

Although the party completed distribution of membership on March 29, it is yet to complete conferences of its committees at various levels–ward, local unit, provincial and House of Representatives before holding district level conferences.

“Conferences won’t take much time, as they could be completed within a few days,” Jha said, adding that the convention could be postponed for a maximum of 20-25 days.

After missing on the first deadline of the election commission for holding its national convention, the party had borrowed time of one year which ends on July 16.