The High Level Political Mechanism meeting at Godavari Resort ended inconclusively on Tuesday. The three parties had set an ambitious agenda to find an agreement to a package deal, including the issue of government change. Nagarik lists the items on the agenda:

To return personal property, including houses and land

To create an environment of trust between the parties

To end the political deadlock

To manage Maoist combatants

To integrate and rehabilitate the combatants

To end the differences in Constituent Assembly

The meeting will continue on Wednesday.

Nepali Congress was represented by Ram Chandra Poudel because the party’s president, Girija Prasad Koirala, was unable to attend due to poor health. That also meant Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal was deprived of an opportunity to confront Koirala about the exact number of Maoists combatants they agreed to integrate in the army. Nagarik writes:

Maoist Chairman Dahal has said that the reports that he had made an agreement with Koirala to integrate 3,000 Maoists in the army are false.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has said that the two leaders had made such an agreement before the Constituent Assemly elections.

Speaking at a commanders’ training session in Chitwan, Dahal said he had told Koirala at least 10,000 combatants should be integrated into the army.

Meanwhile, the Maoist party has mobilised recently released disqualified combatants into a 'paramilitary outfit', Republica reports:

[The Maoist party] has directed them to set up camps in all three constituencies in Ilam -- Ilam district headquarters, around Phikkal and Mangalbare -- with 40 combatants each. They will be put in the camps after receiving training from Maoist leaders.

“The new outfit will be of a higher order than the YCL,” a Maoist source said.

And, a day after media entrepreneur Arun Sinhaniya was killed in Janakpur, unidentified men opened fire at Nagendar Kishan Pampati, president of the College of Medical Science in Bharatpur. Kantipur reports:

Pampati was shot at near Lazimpat in Kathmandu at quarter past six on Tuesday. He survived because the bullets hit the glass of the vehicle he was riding.

Unidentified men fired at his Range Rover (Ba 6 Cha 9999) as he was approaching his rented home in Lazimpat. Pampati’s driver Ram Kumar sped the vehicle forward before they could fire a second shot.

Pampati is an Indian citizen originally from Hyderbad, says Kantipur. Police are conducting a search in Kathmandu, and at all exit points of the capital.