By Xinhua,
Kathmandu : Nepali Constituent Assembly (CA)members began voting in re-polling for the post of the youngest republic’s president on Monday morning at the CA venue, International Convention Center (ICC) in Nepali capital Kathmandu.
At 8 a.m. local time (0215 GMT), the CA members started queuing for casting votes. But for technical glitch, the re-polling was delayed by around ten minutes.
On Saturday evening, Madhesi People’s Rights Forum (MPRF) candidate Paramananda Jha was declared the first vice president of republican Nepal by the CA.
Jha won Saturday’s election with support from NC and the third largest CA party the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) (CPN-UML).
However, none of the presidential candidates gathered simple majority support from the 578 voting CA members. Ram Baran Yadav of the Nepali Congress (NC) bagged 283 votes and Ram Raja Prasad Singh nominated by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN-M) won 270 votes.
Since no single candidate won over half support (298 votes out of 594 CA member voters), two top candidates securing the largest number of votes, Ram Baran Yadav and Ram Raja Prasad Singh, came to contest again in the elections for the second round.
The three parties went together when the CPN-M rejected NC’s proposal for Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and CPN-UML’s proposal for its former general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal to take the presidential post and refused to support MPRF’s vice president claim.
The new alliance of the three parties, with support from some minor parties, is highly supposed to make Ram Baran Yadav win the Monday’s re-polling.
Nepal was declared a federal democratic republic at the first CA meeting on May 28, ending the 240-year Shah dynasty.