Opposition parties have expressed concerns that the government is preparing to introduce an ordinance aimed at splitting political parties. The issue was discussed during a meeting called by CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Friday at the Parliament building in New Baneshwar.

Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) deputy parliamentary leader Biraj Bhakta Shrestha, who attended the meeting, said they suspected Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli was planning to introduce an ordinance to split smaller parties, including those in the ruling coalition.

“We have serious doubts that he will use the ordinance to divide smaller parties, especially those he holds a bias against. He has done this before, and that was the main agenda of the meeting,” Shrestha told reporters after the discussion.

While Shrestha did not specify which smaller parties they feared could be targeted, the ruling coalition includes parties like Nagarik Unmukti Party, Loktantrik Samajbadi Party, and Janata Samajbadi Party, which have fewer seats in parliament.

“Even with a two-thirds majority, he has previously run the government using ordinances. We are concerned whether he is trying to break these smaller parties in the government or even take action against newer parties like ours,” said Shrestha.

The opposition also plans to draw the attention of the government, the Speaker, and the President towards this issue, according to Shrestha. “There was discussion on requesting a special session of parliament or approaching the President if the government continues to misuse power in an authoritarian manner,” he said.

The meeting, called by Dahal to discuss contemporary political issues, was attended by leaders from the RSP, Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), CPN (Unified Socialist), and other opposition groups. Leaders from the ruling coalition’s Loktantrik Samajbadi Party were also present.

At present, dissident groups in various political parties have reportedly halted their plans to split their parties to form new ones as there is a legal void in this connection since 2021 when the then government introduced an ordinance easing the party split process. But, the ordinance ceased to be effective as the government didn’t endorse any bill from the Parliament to replace the ordinance within the given time as per the constitutional provision. While the related provision of the Political Parties Act-2017 was nullified by the ordinance, the new law wasn’t endorsed by the parliament and the legal void has remained so far.

The then Sher Bahadur Deuba government in 2021 had issued an ordinance easing the party split process. The ordinance had allowed dissidents to split a party and form a new outfit by showing support of 20 percent lawmakers from the parliamentary party and 20 percent central committee members of the party. The requirement was 40 percent previously. The then CPN-UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal and Janata Samajbadi Party leader Mahantha Thakur had registered new parties under their leadership based on the same ordinance.