Nepal election throws hung house, ruling combine falls short of majority

Kathmandu, Dec 7 (EFE).- Nepal’s five-party ruling coalition, led by Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, won the national election on Nov.20 but fell short of forming a new government in the Himalayan country.

The election commission declared the results on Wednesday.

The Nepali Congress of Prime Minister Deuba, 76, emerged as the single largest party in the 275-member assembly, winning 89 seats.

The CPN-UML, the main opposition party, secured 78 seats.

The ruling coalition of the Nepali Congress, Maoist Center, Unified Socialist, Janata Samajwadi Party, and Rastriya Janamorcha collectively pocketed 136 seats – two short of the 138 needed to form the government.

The coalition will need support from independents or small parties to return to power.

The Maoist Center, led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, who led the decade-long civil war, is the third largest group with 32 seats.

The newbie, Rastriya Swatantra Party, a group of technocrats seeking to challenge the power of traditional political groupings in Nepal, emerged as the fourth largest with 20 seats.

The pro-Hindu Rastriya Prajatantra Party won 14 seats, and the Janata Samajwadi Party won 12 seats.

Poll panel spokesperson Shaligram Sharma Paudel told EFE that the voter turnout was 61 percent of the 17.98 million registered voters.

On Nov. 20, the country’s nearly 18 million eligible voters voted to elect 275 members of the House of Representatives.

The polls were held alongside provincial elections to elect 550 representatives to the regional assemblies.

Nepal follows a mixed system of electoral format, with 60 percent of representatives chosen through a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system.

The remaining 40 percent are elected through a proportional representation (PR) system based on votes received by the parties. EFE

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