Nepal cabinet expanded amid confusion

KATHMANDU: Nepal���s nearlyone-month-old government Wednesday finally showed some progress with PrimeMinister Madhav Kumar Nepal naming eight more ministers, indicating a truce withthe warring Terai parties that had stayed away due to power-sharingdisagreements.Now the coalition becomes an alliance of six parties,including four major ones. It will have 30 ministers after all the new ones aresworn in. One of them was absent at the oath-taking ceremony Wednesday as he wasout of Kathmandu while a new minister of state was expected to be sworn in laterdue to a bereavement in his family.The third expansion in thecabinet, coming a week after the earlier one, sees the two largest Terai parties��� the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) and Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party(TMLP) ��� sending six ministers. The new MJF ministers areSharad Singh Bhandari (tourism and civil aviation) and Mrigendra Kumar Singh(agriculture and cooperatives minister). The MJF already has its veteran leaderBijay Kumar Gachhadar in the cabinet as deputy prime minister.TheTerai Madhes Loktantrik Party (TMLP) makes its debut in the government withthree cabinet-rank ministers, Ram Chandra Kusabhah (education and sports),Mahendra Yadav (industry) and Ganesh Nepali (youth and sports), and a ministerof state, Dan Bahadur Chaudhuri (industry). Yadav did not attendWednesday���s oath-taking as he was out of Kathmandu.TheRastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), one of the oldest parties of Nepal that wasreduced to a fringe party in the last election for having supported monarchy inthe past, also joined the coalition with its senior leader Deepak Vohra inductedas forest and soil conservation minister.The eighth is Man BahadurShahi of the Communist Party of Nepal ��� Marxist Leninist (land reforms andmanagement).However, there could be yet another expansion in future.Terai���s Sadbhavana Party and about 10 more minor parties could beaccommodated in the cabinet. The biggest party, the Maoists, however are yet notready to end their opposition and join the alliance. Till they relent or atleast agree to end their blockade of parliament, Nepal would find the goingtough, no matter what the size of his cabinet.