Sudurpaschim Assembly Meeting Postponed for Second Time as Government Seeks Congress Support

Dhangadhi: The meeting of the Sudurpaschim Provincial Assembly has been postponed for the second time on Tuesday as the government continues efforts to bring the main opposition, the Nepali Congress, on board after it announced a boycott of discussions on the current fiscal year’s budget.

The meeting, originally scheduled for 9:00 AM, was first postponed until 1:00 PM. However, as the Assembly could not convene at the rescheduled time, the meeting was pushed back again to 5:00 PM, according to Tara Kumari Joshi, Information Officer at the Provincial Assembly Secretariat.

The Nepali Congress had announced that it would not participate in the budget discussions. Kamal Bahadur Shah, leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party and former Chief Minister, said the party would stay away because the budget was unsuitable and the government had failed to coordinate adequately with the opposition.

Meanwhile, the government is working to secure the Congress’s agreement to pass the budget. Amid dissatisfaction over the budget within the ruling party itself, a meeting of the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) parliamentary party was held on Tuesday morning.

The meeting agreed to form a parliamentary committee to investigate contentious issues in the budget and introduce a supplementary budget by Kartik 15. The ruling party plans to pass the budget for now while addressing the disputed issues through the proposed investigation.