Nepal Prime Ministerial election on August 28
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
New Delhi, Aug 26, IRNA -- Nepal's Parliament is set to hold the first round of voting for a new Prime Minister on August 28 after major political parties failed to forge consensus on forming a national unity government within the 10-day deadline given by President Ram Baran Yadav.
Nomination papers will be filed today for the first round of Prime Ministerial election that will be held at 1 pm local time on Sunday, pti reported quoting schedule published by the Business Advisory Committee of the Legislative Parliament of Nepal.
After political parties failed to nominate a consensus candidate for Prime Minister within President Yadav's 10-day deadline, which expired yesterday, the 601-member Parliament was given the responsibility to elect a new Prime Minister through majority vote.
After the amended regulations, there will not be more than three rounds of voting. If no one gets the required number of votes in the first two rounds of polling, those two getting the most number of votes only will contest in the third round, and no lawmaker will be allowed to stay neutral or boycott the election.
Unified-CPN Maoist, the largest party, has projected its Vice Chairman Baburam Bhatarai as the Prime Ministerial candidate, while Nepali Congress today announced that its parliamentary leader Ram Chandra Poudyal would be in the fray.
Soon after the announcement of his candidature, Poudyal met former Prime Minister and senior leader of CPN-UML Madhav Kumar Nepal to seek his party's support for his candidature.
Poudyal requested the senior UML leader for his party's support and Nepal's response was 'positive' during the meeting, sources close to Poudyal said.
Meanwhile, Maoists announced that they would hand over keys of the cantonments where the former rebels' arms are stored to the all-party Special Committee, if the new government is formed under their leadership.
Staking their claim for forming the government, they vowed to complete the peace process and Constitution-drafting at the earliest.
The party also proposed to integrate with the armed forces 8,000 out of a total of 19,000 of its combatants confined in different cantonments.
Parliament is also set to start the Constitution amendment process for extending the term of the Constituent Assembly, which expires on August 31.
The Cabinet headed by caretaker Prime Minister Jhala Nath Khanal has proposed that the Constituent Assembly's term be extended by three months.
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Islamic Republic News Agency/IRNA NewsCode: 30536090
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