06092015010849rpp-600x0By Our Reporter Former Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand and other many leaders of the Rastriya Prajantra Party have been exerting pressure on party chairman Pashupati Shumsher Rana to revive the process to unify the party with the Kamal Thapa-led Rastriya Prajantra Party-Nepal. The unification process initiated earlier was abruptly disrupted by party chairman Rana at the eleventh hour. The two pro-king parties were to be unified formally before appointing any minister from the party. But RPP chairman Rana nominated Deepak Bohora to represent the party in the Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led coalition government leading to the disruption of the entire unification process.  Bikram Pande was another minister from the RPP inducted in the Dahal-led government. The move of Rana to appoint Bohora and Pande as minister and the disruption of the unification process drew flak from not only the RPP-N but also from the influential leaders within Rana’s party. Now the RPP has been without any agenda. Instead the leaders have been divided with one group led by Chanda exerting pressure on Rana to unite the two parties and another group opposing the unification process. The RPP itself is a united form of RPP (Thapa) of late Surya Bahadur Thapa and RPP (Chand) led by Chand. Both the parties were formed immediately after the political change of 1990 and they emerged as king maker during the hung parliament period from 1994 to 1999 with both Thapa and Chanda leading the government turn by turn. Chand became prime minister of the UML-Chand coalition government in 1997 and Thapa led another government of the NC-Thapa coalition after the fall of the Chand-led government in September the same year. RPP-N was formed under the leadership of Kamal Thapa following the 2006 April Uprising.  Thapa has been backing the king demanding that Nepal should be made a Hindu Kingdom. RPP-N had 25 members, all elected under the proportional electoral system, while RPP that was led by Thapa until his demise in 2015 has 13 members including three directly elected ones in the present House. Unification will increase the strength of the party in the parliament. But unification was spoiled by Rana for no apparent reason.