NC gears up for the national convention

The 14th general convention of the Nepali Congress is beginning on Friday by holding the ward level convention to elect the ward committee, the lowest unit of the party.

An agreement was reached between party president Sher Bahadur Deuba and senior leader Ram Chandra Paudel to hold the ward level convention on a single day by ending the relay strike of the district party president loyal to Paudel paved the way for holding the convention on the scheduled date.

The Central Election Committee of the party said that the election process would begin and it would not be postponed in any pretext. "All process of the convention will begin smoothly as there has been no problem to hold the party convention," Mahadev Yadav, chief of the election committee, said.

The party said that it resolved the problem of active membership of 56 districts and deployed election officers in those districts to hold the ward level convention.

After holding the ward level convention the party will hold municipal, constituency, district, provincial and central level conventions. However, the voters for the central level convention should be first elected by the ward level convention. However, a clean scenario as to who will win the central level convention is scheduled for November 25-29 in Kathmandu.

Earlier, the NC had scheduled the convention for September 1, but as it failed to solve the row over active membership, it rescheduled the convention for November. Party president and Prime Minister Deuba earlier extended his term of party chief by one and a half years, and as it will take three more months to conclude the convention, he will be in office for additional 21 months in total.

However, it is not clear yet who will be contesting for the top post in the party as only Deuba and vicepresident Bimalendra Nidhi has announced their candidacy. Likewise, youth leader Gagan Kumar Thapa had announced his candidacy for the post of general secretary. Other leaders like Ram Chandra Paudel, Shekhar Koirala, Sashank Koirala and Prakash Man Singh are also preparing to announce their candidacy. Moreover, it was reported that the rival faction led by Paudel is trying to have a single candidate for the top post so that they could defeat Deuba, who has already been challenged by his close aide Bimalendra Nidhi