Mukul Dhakal, the Rastriya Swatantra Party general secretary and its spokesperson, had voiced his fears before he submitted a review report to party president Rabi Lamichhane. “I could be removed from the party positions once I submitted the review report to the party chair,” Dhakal had said on June 26.

Even before Dhakal handed in the review report, which he had prepared after visiting 38 districts in the wake of the April by-elections, its major findings were already out in the media.

This hadn’t sat well with the party’s top brass and Dhakal’s prophecy came true within two weeks. On Tuesday, the party’s central committee relieved Dhakal of all his party duties. Dhakal is the party’s founding general secretary, spokesperson, and central committee member.

“The party’s central committee meeting has taken the decision to expel Dhakal from all official posts,” Manish Jha, the party’s acting spokesperson, told the Post. “In view of his contribution to the party since its establishment, the central committee has decided to relieve him of his official positions only. He will continue to be a party member.”

Jha said the move comes after the party’s disciplinary commission sought action against Dhakal a week ago, accusing him of incompetence and indiscipline, indecent and chaotic conduct, and violating party rules.

“He is not being punished for what he wrote in the field report, but for his misconduct,” Jha added.

Soon after the RSP expelled him from party positions, Dhakal took to social media and said he was expelled from the “Rabi Lamichhane club,” but “the bell will not stop ringing” within the party.

Bell is the election symbol of the RSP, which now has 21 seats in the House of Representatives. For a party formed just a few months before the November 2022 election, the RSP became the fourth largest in the House, surprising analysts, who said that the party had ridden the back of its leader Lamichhane’s flamboyant personality and anti-establishment politics. The party later joined a coalition government, thereby assimilating with the very forces that it rose to power criticising.

“The determination to turn Rabi Lamichhane’s party into the Rastriya Swatantra Party won’t be stopped, the bell won’t stop ringing,” Dhakal wrote, referring to the party chair’s cult of personality.

Dhakal was suspended from the position of general secretary and party spokesperson for a week on July 3 over the same concerns.

Soon after the RSP faced a sobering loss in the Ilam by-election in April this year, the party’s secretariat meeting on May 3 decided to conduct a cross-country review tour under a Dhakal-led team.

Dhakal commenced the journey on May 19 with the objective of identifying the party’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to its policies, decisions, and organisational structure.

In his political document, prepared after a review tour of 38 districts, Dhakal claimed that the party was headed for a disaster if it did not rectify its mistake.

The review report also criticised the arbitrary nature of the party’s operations, President Lamichhane, and urged making the party bigger than one that, critics say, is built around a single leader’s image, among other things.

On July 3, the party’s central committee discussed Dhakal’s review report. While Dhakal demanded that the meeting be broadcast live on social media, the members unanimously rejected the idea, leaving Dhakal further miffed.

Moreover, that same day, Dhakal publicly criticised Lamichhane in a social media post after the party chief did not allow him to present the proposal he prepared based on the review tour at the meeting.

“During the party secretariat meeting yesterday [July 3], I was told to submit a proposal based on the review report,” Dhakal then said. “I had prepared the written proposal but the party president did not allow me to submit it today.”

He had also said he was promised that he would be allowed to share his thoughts during the central committee meeting. “But the party president did not allow me to do so either,” Dhakal said.

The central committee meeting termed the review report prepared by Dhakal an incomplete document.

Meanwhile, Dhakal had accused party chief Lamichhane of always trying to shirk his responsibility, whatever position he held, before the party officially decided to suspend him from his party position on the demand of the disciplinary commission.

Dhakal had said that when Lamichhane was the managing director of the Gorkha Media Network, he shifted the blame for all wrongdoings to Chairman GB Rai of the company that ran the now-shuttered Galaxy 4k television.

“Now as the party chairman, he is blaming the general secretary for mistakes,” Dhakal had told journalists. “It seems his position never commits a mistake.”

Jha, the acting spokesperson, said that while relieving Dhakal of his duties, the central committee considered all his wrongdoings against the party.

“If he thinks that the central committee’s decision is incorrect, he has the right to complain about it in the party’s appeal committee,” Jha said.

Meanwhile, in his social media post, Dhakal has vowed to talk about the issue further on Wednesday, after reiterating that “the bell will not stop ringing.”