Nepal announces 8th run-off to elect new PM on Sep. 26

After the failure of seven rounds of prime ministerial election consecutively for two months, Nepal's House Speaker Subash Nemwang announced that the next election would take place on Sep. 26 as per the recommendation of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) of the Legislature Parliament of Nepal.

The next election date was declared public after Parliament failed to elect the 34th prime minister of Nepal on Tuesday afternoon, even in seventh attempt.

In Tuesday's seventh run-off election, the candidacy proposals for Chairman Prachanda of Nepal's largest party Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (UCPN-M) and Ramchandra Paudel, vice chairman of the second largest party Nepali Congress (NC) were rejected with majority votes.

UCPN-M Chairman Prachanda got only 252 votes in his favor, 110 votes against him, and 159 lawmakers remained abstain. Similarly, his rival NC Vice-Chairman Paudel got only 192 votes in his favor, 245 votes against him and 151 remained abstain.

According to Interim Constitution of Nepal 2007, a candidate must get simple majority vote-- 301 votes out of 601 lawmakers in the Parliament to win the election.

The existing regulations of the Nepal's House require that voting be carried out ad infinitum unless one of the two candidates gets a clear simple majority or chooses to back out.

Source: Xinhua