Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal has registered a petition at the Supreme Court seeking to review its March 7 decision to revive the CPN-UML and the Maoist Centre.

On March 7, passing a verdict on an almost three-year-old case, a division bench of Justices Kumar Regmi and Bam Kumar Shrestha scrapped the Nepal Communist Party (NCP), which was registered under the names of KP Sharma Oli and Dahal, and ordered the reinstatement of the UML and the Maoist Centre to their pre-merger stage.

The UML and the Maoist Centre had merged in May 2018.

"The Supreme Court has registered Dahal's review petition," said Devendra Dhakal, an information officer at Supreme Court.

After registering the review petition, Dahal told reporters that he has always been saying that the court decision was unnatural and unjustified and he has made his disagreement since the day the judgment was passed.

“We believe that the court would correct its decision of a political nature which has split the parties that had united at a time when the country was on its path of political stability for peace and prosperity,” said Dahal.

Ram Narayan Bidari, a Maoist Centre member who helped draft the petition, said that in their review petition, they have also argued that the Supreme Court had entered into politics while passing the March 7 decision.

The UML and the Maoist Centre now are functioning as two different parties, just like they did before May 2018.

Since the court decision to revive the UML and the Maoist Centre, politics, however, has been deadlocked.

It was expected that the Maoist Centre would withdraw its support it lent Oli in February 2018. Such a move would have forced Oli to seek a vote of confidence in the House. With its indecision, the Maoist Centre, in a way, has given Oli the free hand. Oli now is trying to cultivate the Janata Samajbadi Party, as its support would help him remain in power even if the Maoist Centre withdraws its support.

The Nepali Congress, on the other hand, has maintained that it is not going to make any move to unseat Oli and lead a new government in an alliance with the Maoist Centre and the Janata Samajbadi Party.

Oli’s UML controls 120 seats in Parliament. The Nepali Congress, the main opposition, has 61 seats. With four of its lawmakers defecting to Oli, the Maoist Centre has 49 seats and the Janata Samajbadi Party has 32.