The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has failed to secure a vote of confidence in the country’s House of Representatives.
This means that Dahal – more famous as ‘Prachanda’ – will lose his position as prime minister.
The Kathmandu Post is reporting that Dahal failed to secure the 138 votes required to endorse the trust motion.
He got only 63 votes in the 275-member House. As many as 194 legislators voted against him. A single member abstained.
This floor test was necessitated after the Communist Party of Nepal — Unified Marxist-Leninist withdrew its support to Dahal’s government and left to form an alliance with the Nepali Congress.
In March, Dahal had ousted the Nepali Congress as his key coalition partner and inducted the CPN-UML and two other smaller parties, in a revival of the coalition that he had originally formed shortly after the 2022 parliamentary elections.
The My Republica outlet reported that lawmakers from Maoist Center, Unified Socialist and Rastriya Swatantra Party voted for Dahal, while those from the Nepali Congress, CPN-UML, Rastriya Prajatantra Party, Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP), JSP-Nepal and Janamat Party voted against him.
This is Dahal’s fifth floor test since he was appointed prime minister late in 2022.
Former Indian ambassador to India Ranjit Rae characterised the alliance between the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML by saying it was as if the “BJP and the Indian Congress have joined together, because these are really the two main opposing parties”.
He pointed out that the last time the Congress and the CPN-UML had joined hands was to write the constitution, and that they are back now to amend statutes on several issues with their combined two-thirds majority in parliament. There was some ‘anxiety’ about the smaller new parties that are gaining strength due to the disenchantment with the leadership of the big political parties.
Rae asserted that from India’s perspective, “any grouping that has the Congress in it is better than a Left-oriented grouping”.
As per the agreement reached between the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML, K.P. Sharma Oli, the CPN-UML’s chief, would be prime minister for a year and half, followed by Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba for the rest of parliament’s term.
China has usually batted for a unified communist party, and if not, then a united Left political alliance.
In the current political scenario, the CPN-UML’s Oli has emerged as the tallest and most powerful politician, while Prachanda’s party is weakened fatally, and the Congress remains fragmented into various factions.
“So as far as the Chinese are concerned, if you have a very dominant consolidated Left party and the others become insignificant, it’s the same as all these parties unifying,” said Rae.
This article was updated on July 13 to add former ambassador Rae’s remarks.