By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS,
Kathmandu : The success of Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s three-day visit to Nepal will depend, to a large extent, on his meeting Friday with Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, whose party has stepped up anti-India rhetoric since the fall of his government in 2009.
Krishna’s visit has been given bad press by the Maoist media. It has accused him of pressuring Nepal’s Prime Minister Jhala Nath Khanal into extending the tenure of parliament if it fails to draft a new constitution by May 28, sign an updated treaty with India that will allow the extradition of third-country nationals, and allow India to appoint air marshals on board its national carrier during flights to and from Kathmandu to pre-empt further hijack bids by militants.
A section of the media also speculated that India had come close to supporting Prachanda’s bid to become prime minister again on the condition that he distanced himself from the hawks in his party who have been clamouring for a fresh “people’s revolt”.
Against this backdrop, the meeting of the Maoist leadership that started Wednesday would be heartening for New Delhi.
At the two-day politburo meeting of the former guerrillas in Kathmandu, Prachanda backed down from the party decision taken at a critical meet last year to wage a people’s revolt. Instead, he is now advocating that the party focus on drafting the constitution and bringing the peace process to a positive conclusion.
The chairman’s u-turn was said to have set the hawks in the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), tne largest party in the Himalayan republic, against the moderates.
The Maoist supremo is now following the strategy advocated by his deputy, Baburam Bhattarai. Bhattarai’s repeated call to take the peace process forward had in the past created a deep rift between him and Prachanda. It has also made him the target of allegations that he was propagating the line put forward by the Indian establishment.
But Prachanda’s capitulation is being fiercely resisted by his other deputy, Mohan Baidya, who favours a revolt.
During the 10-year “People’s War” waged by the Maoists in Nepal, Baidya was arrested in eastern India while travelling incognito there for medical treatment. The years he spent in imprisonment in an Indian jail are regarded as having hardened his anti-India stand.
On Friday, the day Krishna meets Prachanda, the central committee of the Maoist party will also meet to decide whether to follow the path of revolution or focus on the peace process.