Nepal's Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala refused to be part of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal’s entourage to New Delhi on a five-day visit beginning Tuesday, after he refused to elevate her to the rank of Deputy Prime Minister.

Koirala informed the Prime Minister in the morning that she was unwell and unable to visit New Delhi.

However, the Prime Minister’s Office as well as sources in the Nepali Congress, the party that Sujata belongs to, confirmed that her decision to drop out at the last minute was a sequel to the PM’s refusal to make her Deputy Prime Minister. Sujata’s octogenarian father G P Koirala, who is also president of the Nepali Congress, had put forward the proposal on Monday night.

Sujata’s belongings have already arrived in Delhi, and the official itinerary circulated shows she had been booked in room no. 710 of Oberoi Hotel where the Prime Minister and other ministers would be staying.

The development has put a question mark on the fate of the coalition government given her father’s potential to bring down the government that consists of 22 political parties, the Nepali Congress being the largest among them. However, Energy Minister Prakash Sharaqn Mahat and MP Deep Upadhyay, both from the Nepali Congress, are part of the official delegation.

In the coalition arrangement, party nominees to the council of ministers are nominated by the parliamentary party leader concerned. “But neither Nepali Congress parliamentary party leader Ramchandra Poudel nor working president Sushil Koirala were consulted on the issue. It was clearly a case of a father’s weakness for his daughter,” said a Nepali Congress leader.