Nepal PM KP Oli faces heat from the party for anti-India and pro-China stand

The Prime Minister of Nepal KP Oli has been facing a tremendous amount of heat from within his own party Nepal Communist Party as demands for his resignation is increasing gradually after he strained ties with India and reports of China illegally encroaching nearly 33 hectares of Nepalese land through road construction in Tibet.

According to the reports, a crucial meeting of ruling party NCP’s Standing Committee is scheduled on July 6 to decide the fate of KP Oli. The meeting of the Nepal Communist Party’s 45-member Standing Committee, the most powerful body of the party was earlier scheduled to be held on Saturday but it was postponed as the party failed to forge consensus on the issue of resignation of Prime Minister Oli.

The senior leaders of the party had earlier demanded Prime Minister Oli’s resignation, stating that his recent anti-India remarks were “neither politically correct nor diplomatically appropriate.”

“The Prime Minister’s remarks that India was conspiring to remove him were neither politically correct nor diplomatically appropriate,” party’s executive chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal ”Prachanda” had said.

The demand for Nepal PM’s resignation grew after KP Oli on June 28 had claimed that ‘India along with local parties was planning to oust him from power’. He had also claimed that there have been various kinds of activities in the “embassies and hotels” to remove him from power.

He had alleged that some Nepalese leaders were also trying to remove him after his government’s had changed the country’s political map by incorporating three strategically key Indian territories – Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura.

Amidst the political crisis in Nepal, Chinese Ambassador in Nepal Hou Yanqi had also met Nepali President Bidhya Devi Bhandari on July 3 in the President House in Kathmandu.

Nepal provokes India by including Indian territories in maps

The tensions between the two countries are on a rise after New Delhi inaugurated a road linking Kailash Mansarovar via Lipulekh on May 8. The Himalayan country had raised objections to India over the construction of the new road.

On May 20, the Nepalese government headed by KP Oli had released a new map of the country, in which it had included Indian territories of Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh and Kalapani as parts of Nepal. KP Oli, who is heading the Nepal Communist Party-led government in the country, had made irredentist claims against India by asserting that Nepal would “bring back at any cost” the Indian territories of Kalapani-Limpiyadhura-Lipulekh area.

Perhaps acting at the behest of China, the Nepal government passed a constitution amendment bill at the Parliament, seeking to amend Schedule 3 of the constitution to update Nepal’s political map in the national emblem.