KATHMANDU, April 6: A voting to pick the parliamentary party leader of the main opposition Nepali Congress (NC) is underway at Singha Durbar on Wednesday.
Party President Sher Bahadur Deuba and senior party leader Ram Chandra Paudel are in the eleciton fray for the post.
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Voters are casting their votes through an electronic voting machine. The voting began at 11 am and will end at 2 pm today.
A candidate must secure at least 104 votes to get elected to the post of parliamentary party leader.
Registering their candidacies at the NC parliamentary party office at Singha Durbar Tuesday, both Deuba and Paudel insisted that they were running in order to keep the party intact. Deuba has claimed that his election to the post will help in the implementation of the new constitution, which was promulgated under a NC-led government. Paudel for his part said that he should be elected to the post for balancing power and distributing responsibility within the party.
The election to pick the main opposition leader in Parliament has been watched with much interest outside the NC as well. In the absence of a main opposition leader in Parliament since the past two months, the Constitution Council has been unable to take any decision for lack of a quorum.
Paudel and Deuba had already contested for PP leader back in 2009, when Deuba lost the race.
But party leaders claim that Deuba has now improved his position and is in a comfortable position to bag the post. Deuba had also lost the PP leader election against the late Sushil Koirala in 2014, with a 16-vote difference, following the second Constituent Assembly election.
