Kathmandu: Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ passed the floor test with 172 votes on Monday. Out of the 262 members present in the House of Representatives (HoR) during the voting, 172 voted in favor of Prime Minister Dahal, while 89 voted against him.
Daha took a confidence vote after his erstwhile coalition partners–CPN-UML, Rastriya Prajatantra Party, Rastriya Swatantra Party, and others–pulled out support from the government, on the eve of the presidential election.
In recent political history, he is probably the first prime minister to break the coalition with one major political party and form a new one with another major political party. He may also be the first prime minister to receive a vote of confidence from parliament within a span of two months.
Two months ago in January, Prachanda secured a total of 268 votes from the 275-member lower House of Nepal’s federal parliament in his first floor test after taking office in December 2022. In a strange move, Nepali Congress, which ought to have stood as the main opposition party as per the parliamentary norms, gave the confidence vote to Dahal, rendering the 275-member lower house of federal parliament opposition-less.
Then CPN-UML was the key alliance partner of the Dahal government in January. Dahal, however, broke the alliance with UML in February over the differences regarding who should succeed President Bidya Devi Bhandari.
While UML argued that since the prime ministerial position had been conceded to Dahal over the power-sharing deal, the post of the president should go to a UML candidate. Dahal made a volte-face and proposed national consensus before finally switching his allegiance to Nepali Congress and supporting NC leader Ram Chandra Poudel in the election of the president.
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