By Our Reporter

The rift between the two ruling parties is widening every day over several issues, mostly the way Prime Minister KP Sharma is working and his remarks.

Rival leaders in NC and its two general secretaries have been criticising the government, especially after Prime Minister Oli tried to suppress the protests of school teachers last month. General Secretaries duo Gagan Thapa and Bishwa Prakash Sharma and senior leader Dr. Shekhar Koirala have been strongly criticising PM Oli.

Moreover, the delay in appointing the governor of Nepal Rastra Bank has further widened the rift. When suspicions whether PM Oli did not intend to appoint a man proposed by NC in the post of governor under different pretexts, the NC leaders sharpened their voice against the government leadership, prompting NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba and PM Oli to hold a meeting on Monday evening. The two leaders reportedly agreed to appoint Gunakar Bhatta as the new governor by Thursday.

When General Secretary Thapa started criticising the government and stopped attending the meetings of the high-level mechanism, speculations were high about whether the government was going to fall, but Deuba managed to convince Oli. Now that the government has presented its policies and programmes in the parliament, there is a possibility of not receiving support from influential NC leaders in the parliament. If Gagan Thapa and Bishwa Prakash Sharma did not defend the policy document in the parliament on behalf of NC, both Deuba and Oli would be morally in a difficult position to approve the policy document and continue the present coalition. This was evident from the way NC lawmaker Sanjay Gautam, who is close to Dr. Shekhar Koirala, criticised the policy document in the parliament on Monday.