It is clearly India’s failure as well, in believing that elections will take place in November at any cost. It chose to ignore that both Koirala and the Maoists are reluctant to go to the polls for different reasons. Koirala wants to prolong his rule, and Maoists want to show to the nation and the world outside that they “alone dictate Nepal’s future political agenda”. Demanding that monarchy be scrapped right away and be replaced by 100 per cent proportional representation, with the full knowledge that this would upset the November election schedule, only shows that either the Maoists are not prepared for the polls, or want it purely on their terms. And both these demands go against the earlier agreement which clearly stated that the fate of the monarchy would be decided by the first meeting of the CA, and that Nepal would follow a mixed model of election system. When elections were called off on October 5, the Election Commission had already dispatched returning officers to the constituencies, and spent nearly a billion rupees in pre-poll preparations.

This rift is going to cost Nepal even more. Besides India, the European Union and other countries also feel that Koirala’s government has lost credibility because of his failure to keep his word. The future of the United Nations Mission (UNMIN) which has been assigned to monitor Maoist guerrilla arms, manage guerrilla and government armies, and observe the election (when it takes place) looks equally uncertain. India, along with Germany, bears a large part of its expenses. India has also lodged complaints with the UNMIN as some of its officials have been crossing over to the Indian border to meet some Nepali insurgent leaders without prior approval.

India made it clear to the government of Nepal that they hoped the UNMIN would fulfill its job as mandated. But the Indian stance differed vastly from that of the UNMIN chief Ian Martin. While India considers the peace process and elections to be interlinked and insists that an early date for elections be fixed, Martin is of the view that merely fixing dates is not going to help the process. UNMIN’s current tenure in Nepal expires in January. And if the current bitterness grows further, that uncertainty may cut short the UNMIN’s stay, and clearly that will have a bearing on the peace process.

The crucial reason that has stalled both the peace process and the elections is the lack of basic honesty on the part of the key political players of Nepal to stick to what they have already agreed to. If Maoists simply honour their public pledges and wait for the CA to decide the fate of the monarchy, and follow the mixed system of polling on one hand, and on the other, if PM Koirala simply stops prolonging his authoritarian rule based on his assessment that there is no alternative to him, Nepal’s politics will fall back on track.