A rift in the United Marxist Leninist leadership has come into the open after major defections in the party created by the joining of the Congress of the Dhankuta organizer Ananda Santoshi Rai, among others.

Chandra Prakash Mainali and Madan Bhandary have come out in the open with an exchange of words in the media, purifying outstanding differences between the two that surfaced in the central committee meeting recently.

It is learnt that meetings among party men are being discouraged by firebrand General Secretary Madan Bhandary on the eve of the approaching convention, which takes place little over a month. This has been so designed as to isolate Mainali, his critics say.

People’s Review, 9 December 1991.