By Xinhua,
Kathmandu : Nepali President Ram Baran Yadav on Tuesday has extended the government formation deadline by three days after a request from the major big parties.
President Yadav accepted the parties’ request as the seven-day deadline to form a consensus government expired on Tuesday.
Chairman Prachanda of the single largest party of Constituent Assembly (CA), the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN-M), met the president at Shitwal Niwas, the presidential residence in capital Kathmandu, in the evening and formally made the request to him, according to local leading news website Nepalnews.com.
Emerging from the Shital Niwas meeting, the CPN-M chief said he was optimistic that the parties would be able to reach an agreement on the next government within the deadline.
“Considering the way the four parties have discussed this issue in the last two days, I’m pretty hopeful that there will be an agreement in three days,” he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, a meeting of the CPN-M and three other largest CA parties, Nepali Congress, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and Madhesi People’s Rights Forum had decided to ask the President for an extension of the deadline. The four parties also formed a taskforce to prepare the common minimum program (CMP) of the upcoming “national unity government”.
Following President Ram Baran Yadav’s call on last Tuesday to form a national consensus government, the CPN-M intensified initiatives to form the consensus government.
Due to arguments over power sharing, the CPN-M failed to forge a consensus among the CA parties to form a new government till now when the CA results have come out for around three months.