India watches as KP Oli faces ‘revolt’

NEW DELHI: After the initial hostility over Nepal’s new map, the government has adopted, for now, a more sedate approach to the neighbour, not least because of the fissures in the ruling communist party coming to the fore in the past few days. While it may be too early to say that Nepal PM K P Oli’s days are numbered, his combative rival in the party, P K Dahal Prachanda, has made it clear he has had enough of the unilateral manner in which Oli is allegedly working.

According to reports from Nepal, Oli is already facing calls for his resignation. India has also closely followed reports that Nepal may have ceded territory to China but this has been strongly denied by Nepal’s foreign ministry.

India’s reaction to internal developments in the past week or so in Nepal has been limited to reminding Kathmandu that the government has worked to ensure that supplies of essentials to Nepal despite the lockdown have remained unaffected. Recalling that bilateral trade with Nepal surpassed $300 million in May, the government said this week that people of India and Nepal shared deep-rooted and familial bonds which reflected the close civilisational and cultural linkages between the two countries.


According to reports in Nepal media, the communist party standing committee meeting this week saw Oli and Prachanda accusing each other of “failing” the government and party. Kathmandu Post quoted party members to say Prachanda had made a “sensitive revelation” in the meeting about what Oli had been up to apparently to survive as PM. “We have heard that Pakistani, Afghani or Bangladeshi models are being worked out to remain in power, but such attempts are not going to succeed,” Dahal said on Wednesday, according to the leader quoted by Post.

Oli’s faction is in minority in the all important standing committee. Prachanda was also said to have spoken about how it was not going to be possible for anyone to send people to jail on false charges of corruption. “It’s not easy to rule the country with the help of the army and it is not possible to split the party and run the government by allying with the opposition,” he was quoted as saying in the meeting.

While even Prachanda is not seen as particularly friendly to India, the government here believes he has never really undermined India’s interests the way Oli has.

On Thursday, however, Nepal strongly denied reports regarding “encroachment” of its territory by China, saying the border between the two friendly neighbours was delineated and demarcated on the basis of the Boundary Treaty in 1961 and subsequent protocols.