Senior leaders of the left alliance have concluded that merger of the CPN-UML and the CPN-Maoist Centre will not be possible before Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s India visit, which is likely to begin on April 6.

PM Oli, who is also the UML chairman, senior UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal, CPN-Maoist Centre Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and senior CPN-MC leader and Minister for Home Affairs Ram Bahadur Thapa have reached an understanding that the unification would not happen in the first week of April as planned earlier since less than 10 days remain for Oli’s India visit.

“Both the task forces on unification have not completed their tasks,” a highly-placed source told THT.

According to The Himalayan Times, PM Oli and Dahal had held a meeting in this regard today and yesterday at Baluwatar.

Earlier, Dahal had agreed to Oli’s proposal to announce unification before his India visit, while Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Barshaman Pun had publicly said the unification would happen before the PM’s departure to India.

But Nepal-led task force has not completed its task of drafting the unified party’s common political document, and Thapa-led task force has yet to conclude its task of preparing statute and organisational structure of the unified party and its sister organisations.

According to Thapa-led task force member Surendra Pandey, the panel is expected to complete its task by tomorrow. “We are yet to finalise the exact number of central committee members of the unified party,” he said. “However, it has already been decided that Oli and Dahal will be co-chair of the unified party.”

The CPN-MC has postponed its secretariat meeting that was slated for Thursday till April 3. The meeting was supposed to endorse the task forces’ reports for the party unification.

Earlier, left leaders had decided to announce unification on April 22, coinciding with the birth anniversary of Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin.

The parties are likely to stick to that schedule.

The Thapa-led task force has proposed to keep chairpersons and secretaries in seven provinces and 77 districts chapters of the unified party as office bearers. It has almost finalised drafts of party’s statute and modalities of unification of parties’ sister organisations. UML has 22 sister organisations and CPN-MC 24.