For the first time since its formation in June 2022, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) held its central committee meeting on Saturday chaired by a leader other than Rabi Lamichhane, the party’s founding president who is in police detention for an investigation into cooperatives fraud charges.

Dol Prasad (DP) Aryal, the acting president of the RSP, chaired the central committee meeting.

Since police arrested party president and former home minister Lamichhane on October 18 on charges of fraud, money laundering and organised crime, the RSP had not held a central committee meeting.

The RSP on December 23 appointed Aryal the acting president with effect from December 22, the day the District Attorney’s Office in Kaski filed a case against Lamichhane, along with 30 other individuals, at the Kaski District Court, accusing them of embezzling deposits from the Pokhara-based Suryadarshan Cooperative.

The House of Representatives suspended Lamichhane’s position as lawmaker following the filing of the case in the court.

Organising a meeting of the central committee, one of the most powerful bodies in a political party, and making crucial decisions from the powerful agency, Aryal has started exercising his full authority, instead of running the organisation on an ad-hoc basis.

During the Saturday meeting, the party leader accused the government of using the Cooperatives Ordinance 2024 to target Lamichhane.

Amending some Nepal laws on cooperatives, the Cabinet on December 24 decided to introduce an ordinance related to the cooperatives and forwarded it to the President's Office for approval. President Ramchandra Paudel subsequently issued the ordinance on December 29.

The ordinance amends some clauses of the Cooperative Act-2017 and the Rastra Bank Act-2002 and revises the Deposit and Credit Guarantee Fund Act-2016. As the winter session of Parliament has yet to commence, these Acts were amended through an ordinance.

The ordinance provides for conciliation under Section 130: “A conciliation may be made if the member requests a settlement after the savings or embezzled funds have been returned.”

However, the ordinance also clarifies that settlement is not possible in cases related to organised crime, money laundering, and other criminal offences where it is impossible under prevailing law.

The district court has filed cases against Lamichhane for cooperatives fraud, organised crime, and money laundering. The court has sought imprisonment up to 15 years and Rs278.9 million in compensation.

RSP leaders at the central committee meeting argued that the amendment was targeted at Lamichhane saying that the change did not allow conciliation particularly in cases of organised crime and money laundering.

“The need of the hour was to introduce a law to solve the problems faced by the cooperative sector in general, provide justice to the victims and book the culprits under the law,” Ganesh Parajuli, a central committee member, said. “But the government played a negative role in this process by trying to protect the culprits.”

He claimed that some clauses in the ordinance were meant only to frame the RSP president.

Ganesh Karki, another central committee member, said that the meeting opposed the Cooperatives Ordinance also because it was a legal measure enforced bypassing Parliament.

According to him, the central committee meeting is scheduled to discuss the agenda of constitution amendment on Sunday.

The issue of statute amendment has drawn national attention after the country’s two largest parties—the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML— formed the government in July with a pledge to make changes in the constitution.

The central meeting also decided to hold the party’s first general convention in the second week of May in Chitwan.

Leaders at the meeting reviewed the party’s performance in the local by-elections held in December, in which the party failed to perform well.