He has urged the leaders to expedite inter-party consultations so as to make the upcoming session result-oriented.[break]
The agenda of electing new prime minister is scheduled to be tabled at the beginning of the parliament session.
Sources at the parliament secretariat said the speaker has communicated to the top leaders that he would fix the date for next prime ministerial election at the first meeting of the House. According to the officials, the speaker is for expediting the PM election process and not for delaying it any further.
"He will fix the date for next round of voting at the first sitting of the session itself no matter whether the parties are not ready or not," said the sources. Apart from urging directly to the top leaders in person, Nembang has also been consistently pressing the leaders through the chief whips of the major political parties to end their differences.
The parliament failed to elect new prime minister even after 16 rounds of voting as none of the prime ministerial candidates secured majority. Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal resigned his post on June 30.
Unlike in the previous session, this time the parties will feel the pressure once the date for prime ministerial election is fixed because the Supreme Court, in its recent verdict, has clearly said lawmakers can neither abstain from voting nor can they remain neutral in the vote. Earlier, lawmakers from the UML had been abstaining from the voting.
"When the parliament session begins, I have to fix the date as electing a new prime minister is a long overdue," Nembang told Republica.
He argued that the prime ministerial election can´t be further delayed also because the parties had earlier reached an agreement on giving top priority to government formation.
At the first sitting of the House, the speaker is likely to fix the date for next parliament sitting in a gap of two or three days as practiced in the past.
The fate of the candidacy of Nepali Congress leader Ram Chandra Paudel, the lone candidate in the race, will be decided through a vote. His candidacy is likely to be defeated as the largest UCPN (Maoist) party and the third largest CPN-UML have already decided to vote against him.
After Paudel´s defeat, the prime ministerial election will enter a next stage. In the second stage, the parties will have to field new candidates.
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