March 1995
Prachanda's Unity Centre held its "Third Plenum", during which they foreswore elections (it is believed at the insistence of RIM) and decided to take up arms. It was during that meeting that the Unity Centre was renamed the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

September 1995
the party's central committee adopted a "Plan for the historical initiation of the people's war" which stated that the "protracted people's war [will be] based on strategy of encircling the city from the countryside according to the specificities of our country. The Party once again reiterates its eternal commitment to the theory of people's war developed by Mao as the universal and invincible Marxist theory of war."

February 1996
Baburam Bhattarai presented the Nepali Congress-led coalition government of Sher Bahadur Deuba with a list of 40 demands related to "nationalism, democracy and livelihood". These included abrogation of both the 1950 and the Mahakali treaties with India (one on "peace and friendship" and the other on the sharing of the water on the western frontier river); introducing work permits for foreign (i.e. Indian) workers in Nepal; curtailing all privileges of the royal family; drafting of a new constitution through a constituent assembly; nationalising the property of "comprador and bureaucratic capitalists"; declaring Nepal a secular nation; and also details such as providing villages with roads, drinking water and electricity; and complete guarantee of freedom of speech and publication.

Incidentally, these demands were not much different from the points outlined in the 1991 election manifesto of the above-ground united UPF. Bhattarai's covering letter contained an ultimatum that unless the government initiated positive steps towards fulfilling those demands by 17 February 1996, "we will be forced to embark on an armed struggle against the existing state." .

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was on a state visit to India when the Maoists struck in six districts on 13 February, four days before the deadline had even expired. The Maoists have begun the uprising.