India, Jan. 15 -- But the Nepali Congress factions may still decide that breaking up is hard to do so close to polls At the stroke of the midnight hour, it finally came to something everyone in Nepal's oldest and biggest party had been dreading - a split.

Not that this was anything new. The Nepali Congress (NC) had splintered twice before and the main protagonist both times was five-time prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba. After the GenZ uprising and being physically mauled and his house looted and set on fire on 9 September Deuba had said he was stepping aside, but it seems old ambitions die hard.

The showdown between the Gagan Thapa-Bishow Prakash Sharma camp and Deuba came to a head on Wednesday as the establishment leadership decided...