Nepal parties submit names of members of new constitution drafting body

Nepal's political parties have submitted the name list of 335 members of new Constituent Assembly (CA) under the proportional category (PR), paving the way to declare the final election result, the Election Commission said on Monday. The EC, a constitutional body mandated for holding national and local election, will announce the final result of election within a week. Once the official election result is out, the government will call the first meeting of CA which will ease the process of formation of the new government and expedite the constitution drafting process. The Nepali Congress submitted the names of 91 members, CPN-UML submitted names of 82 and UCPN (Maoist) submitted the names of 54 members. The remaining seats are allocated to fringe parties. Earlier, the task was delayed as UCPN (Maoist) which relegated to third position after the November 19 Constituent Assembly (CA) elections, was refusing to submit the lists, stating that its demands should be addressed first. Parties agreed to extend the deadline of PR submission by three times to accommodate the UCPN ( Maoist) in the constitution drafting assembly. All the parties submitted the name list after the four-point agreement on Dec. 24 which addressed the Maoist demand of formation of a parliamentary panel to investigate the vote-rigging. While selecting the candidates, parties have faced internal problems and some also suffered split. The Rastriya Prajatantra Party Nepal (RPP-N) suffered split as the number of the aspirants was high. Nepal held Constituent Assembly (CA) election on Nov. 19 to elect 601-member assembly which is expected to write a constitution within a year. Out the 601 members, 240 members were elected from First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) category on Nov. 19 elections, while 335 are being elected from PR category, while the remaining 26 seats will be appointed by the cabinet.