A joint meeting of Maoist leaders is taking place at the Prime Minister’s residence, Baluwatar, since early morning today.

The meeting is taking place after the Supreme Court ordered to register a case against PM Dahal as he claimed responsibility for 5,000 deaths during the Civil War era.

CPN (Maoist Center) Chair and Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, CPN (Maoist Revolutionary) Chair Mohan Vaidya (Kiran), Nepal Samajwadi Party (NSP) Chair Dr Baburam Bhattarai, General Secretary of CPN Maoist Netra Vikram Chand (Biplav) and other leaders are included in the meeting.

On Sunday, CPN (Maoist Centre) also issued a press release condemning the apex court’s decision to register a writ petition filed against PM Dahal.

PM Dahal provided a statement in a public event on the occasion of the 2020 Maghi festival, expressing that he can take responsibility for 5,000 killed during the Civil War insurgency period and not 17,000 deaths.

“The CPN-MC cannot tolerate any act that goes beyond the People’s War. We want to remind the concerned agencies that the writ petitioner brought the petition against Dahal with malicious intent and the petition was against the principles of judicial review and freedom of expression guaranteed by the constitution,” the CPN-MC stated in its press release.

The CPN-MC also warned government agencies against accepting jurisdiction in cases that fell under the jurisdiction of truth and reconciliation mechanisms, stating any act against the peace process ‘could pose serious challenges’.

The then CPN-Maoist, with Dahal as its chairman, waged the armed insurgency for 10 years (1996-2006) in the name of the ‘People’s War’.

During the 10-year-long conflict, at least 17,000 civilians were killed by both the-then state and the Maoist group with property damage of more than hundreds of billions of rupees.