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Congress parties agree to make Sushil acting president and Deuba senior most leader

Both the Congress parties have agreed to make Sushil Koirala as acting president and Sher Bahadur Deuba as the senior leader ahead of the acting president in the party hierarchy, reports Kantipur daily.

Disputes regarding vice presidency, district and regional committee leadership has stalled the unification negotiations between the taskforces of Nepali Congress (NC) and NC-Democratic for the last one week. The NC-D leaders have warned that they would go ahead on their own if there is no agreement on unification process within next five days.

The daily quotes sources as saying that Prime Minister and president of NC Girija Prasad Koirala met with Sushil and Deuba, separately, last week, to reach to the understanding. He first met with Deuba to convince him to give acting presidency of the unified party to Sushil. Subsequently, he met with Sushil to convince him to accept Deuba as senior leader ahead of him in the protocol. PM Koirala then informed the taskforces of the understanding.

Meanwhile, the report added that there were still disputes regarding seniority in vice presidents and general secretary. As per the understanding, the two vice presidents of NC-D, Gopal Man Shrestha and Prakash Man Singh will become vice presidents of the unified party as well. However, the NC has asked NC-D to consider the complications that would arise with this decision since its general secretary duo Ram Chandra Poudel and KB Gurung are quite senior to Shrestha and Singh.

Likewise, the taskforces are yet to reach final understanding regarding the leadership of district committees. nepalnews.com sd Aug 13 07