While working to create the best NRNA, KC faction forms parallel committees. NRNAs with the best leadership will have a legitimate NCC in all countries.

Kathmandu. Internal disputes are escalating within the Non-Resident Nepali Association (NRNA). While Mahesh Shrestha's leadership is trying to make the association unified and effective, the faction led by the association's President Badri KC is busy bypassing the legal process and forming parallel committees in the National Coordination Councils (NCCs) of various countries. Activists have said that this move has raised serious questions about the unity, democratic system and legal legitimacy of the association. Mahesh Shrestha is the official president elected by the unity general convention as per the Supreme Court's mandate. But KC has claimed to be the president by filing several cases. Despite Shrestha being the official president, the KC faction has been forming parallel committees there, considering as 'illegal' the NCCs that do not hold their conventions within the portal and time limit set by him. According to sources close to Mahesh Shrestha, these NCCs were elected through the legal process in the past when KC, Kul Acharya and Rabina Thapa were joint presidents, and now, while the case is pending in the Supreme Court, KC's attempt to do anything arbitrary is against the core essence of the association. NRNA spokesperson Gangadhar Gautam said that KC was seen in the illegal act of announcing the new president of the KC faction by bypassing the elected NCC and taking some office bearers of the same committee with him. Similarly, the KC faction has created a situation where the ‘membership distribution committee’ and ‘election committee’ from the center are formed and the convention is held online, in which the local NCC has no role.

In some countries, the committee has even been announced by directly appointing the president without an election. After the official NCC in the US rejected the process of the KC faction, Bikash Upreti was declared the president without an election. In Belgium, a parallel committee was announced while Sita Sapkota’s legal NCC was preparing for the convention on August 17. After the committee led by Ramesh Bhatt in Qatar held an election, the KC faction formed another committee. Similarly, this has not been possible in the UAE so far. The same practice was repeated in the Netherlands, Denmark and Malta in Europe - while another committee was announced after the convention of Thansur Kadel's statutory committee in the Netherlands, the elected structure has been bypassed in Denmark-Malta. Two committees each were active in Australia and Canada, and now the dispute has escalated. There is also a division from the KC side in Japan, Malaysia, Korea, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc. According to NRNA experts, the strong argument of the Mahesh Shrestha side lies in legal validity. In most countries, NCCs are registered according to the laws of the respective countries. For example, Sita Sapkota's committee is legally registered in Belgium, and the committee announced by the KC side is not recognized by the law. In such a situation, the transfer of leadership and official work is possible only through a statutory committee. Shrestha also said that the committees formed by the KC side are only in name and it is clear that they cannot be active at the local level due to legal and technical reasons. The KC side claims to have its own structure in 58 countries, but the reality is different. Countries like African countries with small membership or the Philippines have also been counted, whose decisive influence on the overall political process of the association is negligible, according to the Shrestha faction. Mahesh has accused the KC faction of forgetting the main objective of the association—protecting the interests and identity of NRNs—and of dominating power politics based on personal interests. The KC faction's game of forming parallel committees is not only losing the association's international reputation but also losing trust at the local level. Shrestha himself has publicly expressed the view that dialogue, legal processes, and legal norms should be the basis for resolving disputes. According to him, the future of the association lies in unity and transparency, not in division and parallel structures. This power struggle within the association has now reached a decisive stage. On one side, there is the Mahesh Shrestha faction, which favors legal processes and legal norms and forms a unified NRNA, while on the other side, there is the Badri KC faction, which seeks to expand its influence by forming parallel committees. The KC faction, however, has clarified that there is no justification for parallel committees and that they will have their own legal committees in all countries.