Seven ministers of the KP Sharma Oli Cabinet have resigned.

All the ministers, who belong to the Pushpa Kamal Dahal-Madhav Nepal faction in the ruling Nepal Communist Party, tendered their resignation late on Sunday afternoon, hours after President Bidya Devi Bhandari endorsed the Oli Cabinet recommendation for the dissolution of the House of Representatives.

“We have already made it clear that we had opposed the prime minister’s move of dissolving the House of Representatives,” the ministers said in a joint statement. “We hereby resign from our posts to express our disagreement to the prime minister’s unconstitutional and undemocratic move which is against the people’s mandate and political principles and stability.”

Those who resigned on Sunday are Minister for Education, Science and Technology Giriraj Mani Pokhrel; Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Barsha Man Pun; Minister for Agriculture and Livestock Development Ghanashyam Bhusal; Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Yogesh Kumar Bhattarai; Minister for Forest and Environment Shakti Bahadur Basnet; Minister for Labour and Employment Rameshwor Raya Yadav and Minister for Water Supply and Sanitation Bina Magar.

After dissolving the House as per the Oli Cabinet’s recommendation, the President has called for general elections for April 30 and May 10.

In a drastic step, Oli on Sunday decided to dissolve the House amid deepening crisis in his Nepal Communist Party where he has fallen into minority after the faction led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhala Nath Khanal put a pressure on him either to abide by party decisions or step down.

Oli was elected prime minister in February 2018 after the alliance of his CPN-UML and Dahal’s CPN (Maoist Centre) was handed a majority in the 2017 elections. The two parties had merged in May 2018 to form the Nepal Communist Party.

But rising tensions in the party had threatened Oli’s chair.

In November 1994, then prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala of the Nepali Congress had dissolved the House. After that, then CPN-UML’s Manmohan Adhikari had formed a minority government. But Adhikari too had attempted to dissolve the House, only to be challenged at the Supreme Court which restored the Parliament.