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By Our Reporter

After the fall of the government led by him, Pushpa Kamal Dahal of the CPN (Maoist Centre) is now facing a challenge in the party. His leadership has been challenged almost 13 years after the Dhobighat incident in 2011 when influential Maoist leaders stood together to make Baburam Bhattarai Prime Minister in place of Dahal. Then Dahal had fallen in the minority for the first time. Now he is facing a similar challenge. Maoist leader Janardan Sharma demanded that Dahal should quit the party leadership.

Familiar with the brewing discontent in the party, Dahal recently announced that he would not become Prime Minister from now onward, but Sharma demanded that Dahal should quit the party chairman.

Of course, the Maoist Centre has become weak in Dahal’s leadership in the last 16 years. The party that emerged as the largest party in 2008 Constituent Assembly elections won 220 seats in the 601-member CA. But it slipped to third position in 2013 CA poll and further became weaker in the two general elections held in 2017 and 2022. Now the party has only 32 members in the 275-member House of Representatives.

As such, his leadership has been questioned. Although the leaders who challenged his leadership in 2011 were cornered thereafter and quit the party, the situation has now changed because of the diminishing strength and popularity of the party. If Dahal dares to corner Sharma, the party is likely to become weak even in its base areas of Rukum and Rolpa because Sharma hails from the area.

His greed to become PM, nepotism and unstable nature have made Dahal weak in his party and waged an armed insurgency in which 17,000 Nepalis were killed in a decade.