Nepal vote-count confirms Maoists as biggest party with 220 seats

Apr 25, 2008, 10:19 GMT

Kathmandu - The Nepalese Election Commission Friday announced official results of the Himalayan nation's election held two weeks ago, confirming the Maoists as the biggest party in the new constituent assembly.

The Election Commission said the Maoists had won 100 seats through proportional representation, pushing its total number of seats to 220 in the 601-member assembly.

The official result also confirmed that the Maoists fell short of a majority in the constituent assembly which is tasked with writing a new constitution and ratifying a decision of the interim parliament to abolish monarchy.

The Nepali Congress party of Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala was a distant second with 110 seats, 73 of which were from the proportional voting.

The moderate Communist Party of Nepal - Unified Marxist Leninist won a total of 103 seats including 33 in the directly contested seats.

The final result showed that two southern Nepal based parties had done well.

Madhesi People's Right Forum, which championed the cause of ethnic Madhesis in the south, won a total 52 seats including 30 through direct elections.

Another regional party, Terai Madhes Democratic Party, won 20 seats.

The two southern parties' performance is considered significant in view of the violent protests that crippled normal life in southern Nepal for weeks earlier this year, in their bid to fight for the rights of ethnic Madhesi people.

The two parties say the ruling establishment, made up of predominantly people from the hills, discriminated against ethnic Madhesis.

'The parties have one week to nominate members by including women, people from the oppressed and backward class as per the election rules on inclusion of these communities,' the Election Commission said.

The commission warned the parties may lose seats if they were not able to meet the regulations.

'If the parties are unable to include marginalised groups in the list of nominations, they will be given an extra three days. If they fail again to meet the criteria, the seat will go to the next biggest party,' the commission told representatives of political parties.

The Constituent Assembly's first task will be to form a new government and ratify a decision of the interim parliament to the abolish monarchy.

The election was a key part of the peace agreement between the government and the Maoist rebels that ended a decade-long insurgency in which nearly 14,000 people died.