Nepal PM wins parliamentary vote of confidence

KATHMANDU: Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal won a parliamentary vote of confidence on Wednesday, a week after he formed his third coalition in just over a year to head a government which is dominated by the liberal communists.

Dahal, a former Maoist guerrilla leader in the Himalayan nation sandwiched between China and India, formed a coalition cabinet including the Nepali Congress party and other smaller groups last year.

He changed allies this month saying he was not given a free hand.

The new cabinet is dominated by the liberal Nepal Communist Party (UML) and includes several other smaller groups. He had also headed a coalition with the UML briefly after the 2022 elections.

Parliament Speaker Dev Raj Ghimire said Dahal won 157 votes against the 138 required in the 275-member parliament, while 110 lawmakers voted against him.

“I was let down several times ... and was forced to form a new coalition cabinet, which is just a regular political process,” Dahal said in parliament on Wednesday, referring to the Nepali Congress, which is now the main opposition party.

Nepali Congress said after the break-up last week that the prime minister had deceived it by dumping it from the cabinet without any notice.Dahal led a decade-long insurgency from 1996 which caused 17,000 deaths before he joined mainstream politics under the 2006 peace deal overseen by the United Nations.