Madhav Kumar Nepal has been elected the leader of the Parliamentary Party of his newly formed political outfit CPN (Unified Socialist).

A meeting of the CPN (Unified Socialist)’ Parliamentary Party on Sunday elected Nepal as the leader unanimously, said Birodh Khatiwada, a lawmaker from the party.

The CPN (Unified Socialist) was registered as a new party at the Election Commission last week after the Madhav Nepal group split from the CPN-UML, aided by an ordinance introduced by the Sher Bahadur Deuba government.

Nepal’s party has 23 members in the House of Representatives and seven in the National Assembly.

The party on Sunday also elected Beduram Bhusal as the leader of the Parliamentary Party of the National Assembly.

The meeting has also decided to form a five-member task force to draft the statute of the Parliamentary Party.

Bhawani Khapung, Sher Bahadur Kunwar, Laxmi Chaudhary, Nira Jairu and Thagenda Puri are the members of the task force.

The Nepal faction of the UML had played an instrumental role in installing Nepali Congress’ Deuba as prime minister. After its formation, the CPN (Unified Socialist) is now set to join the government. It is not immediately clear how many ministerial berths the party is going to get.

Earlier on Sunday, Deuba had held talks with Nepal and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, chair of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), the key coalition partner in the government to discuss Cabinet expansion. But the meeting ended without taking any decision.

The coalition partners are expected to meet on Monday as well to discuss Cabinet expansion. The Janata Samajbadi Party is yet another coalition partner in the Deuba government.

With 23 members in the lower house, the CPN (Unified Socialist) is the fourth largest party after the UML (98), the Nepali Congress (61), and Maoist Centre (49). The Janata Samajbadi is the fourth party with 19 members.

In the National Assembly, the CPN (Unified Socialist) has seven seats, equal to the Nepali Congress. The UML with 31 seats is the largest party, while the Maoist Centre has 14.

“Nepal as party chair and leader of the Parliamentary Party has been entrusted with the task of taking all the decisions, including selection of leaders as ministers,” said Khatiwada.