Another high-profile wedding in Nepal?

KATHMANDU - Close on the heels of Bollywood diva Manisha Koirala’s marriage to a Nepali businessman, Nepal’s media has now started talking about another high-profile wedding with the Himalayan nation’s first daughter ready to tie the knot.

It is now the turn of embattled Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, who has staved off attacks on his government by the opposition Maoist party for over a year, to host the wedding of his daughter Suman, the Jana Aastha weekly said.

Suman, an MBBS from New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences, is currently doing her internship in the Indian capital.

She will be marrying a fellow Nepali student, identified only by his surname Sapkota, said the weekly .

In the past, the tabloid had been the first to break the news of dead Nepali crown prince Dipendra Shah’s love Devyani Rana becoming engaged to former Indian minister Arjun Singh’s grandson Aishwarya Singh.

It had also been the first to report about the remarriage of Dipendra’s brother-in-law Gorakh Shumsher Rana, who survived the tragic massacre in the royal palace in 2001 in which his wife, Princess Shruti, and nine other royals were killed.

The news of the prime minister’s daughter’s wedding comes even as Nepal remains in the throes of a political impasse, with the Maoists declaring they will not allow the government to table its policies for the new financial year and pass the budget unless the prime minister resigned.

So far, the premier has warded off the onslaught, thanks to the backing given by its ally, the Nepali Congress, the second largest party in parliament after the Maoists.

However, now the Nepali Congress may be rethinking its support with its top leaders themselves jockeying for the coveted post.

Against this backdrop of uncertainty, the prime minister’s media advisor said the wedding report was “premature”.

“Since the prime minister’s daughter is of marriageable age, she’s likely to get married,” Bishnu Rijal told IANS. “However, she’s just gone to India for her studies and there’s no question of a wedding immediately. In any case, the next three months are regarded as inauspicious.”

While Nepal’s fractious political parties’ bitter fight for power led to a 10-year Maoist insurgency and emboldened two kings to stage a coup, wedding parties have proved to be far more reconciliatory.

During Devyani’s wedding, her Rana family extended an olive branch to the royals, who had once bitterly opposed her proposed marriage to the crown prince.

Manisha’s wedding feast, which continued till Monday, saw the Maoists bury the hatchet with royalists. Both deposed king Gyanendra and his arch-enemy, Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, attended the reception, though at different times.

(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)