For the seventh time in a row, Maoist supremo Prachanda today failed to become Nepal's new prime minister, as a breakaway group of Madhesi MPs, whose support he was banking on, opted to stay away from voting in Parliament at the last moment.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal, whose nom de guerre is Prachanda, thus fell far short of majority support in the fresh round of voting in the constituent assembly, which failed to end a stalemate that has held up vital government spending and threatened the fragile peace process.
With the breakaway group of 25-strong Madhesi alliance opting to stay away, Prachanda managed to get only 252 votes, far short of 301 required to get elected, amid reports of horse trading, bribery allegations and allegations of Maoists seeking funds from China to wean away lawmakers.
110 lawmakers voted against him, while 159 stayed neutral.
The breakaway Madhesi group, which had been wooed by the Maoists, apparently stayed away as even with their support, Prachanda was still short of numbers.
His rival Ramchandra Poudyal of the Nepali Congress fared no better barely managing to hold on to his party's vote bank of 119.
As the lawmakers remained deadlocked, speaker Subas Chandra Nembang set September 26 as the next date for a new trial of strength.
Despite the decision to cast vote in favour of the Maoist supremo, the Madhesi Janaadhikari Forum Nepal (MJF-N) abstained from voting. A MJF-N leader said the party lawmakers did not vote because it was obvious that despite their support the Maoist candidate would fall short of the majority.
The CPN-UML remained neutral in today's election also, while Madhesi Janadhikar Forum stayed away from the House meeting.
Caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, whose resignation triggered the present impasse said that it is high time that the national consensus was forged.
Talking to the media at the constituent assembly premises after the seventh round of voting, Nepal opined that the power-sharing issues including election of the country's executive head have become secondary now.
He said the parties should get together to forge the consensus with the proposal floated by his party as a focal point.
"Let's forge the national consensus first, then we will mull over the power-sharing," he said.
It has now been more than two months that the Nepalese lawmakers have failed to elect the new prime minister to succeed Madhav Kumar Nepal.
In successive votes, 55-year-old Prachanda has been gradually increasing his vote support, but is still running far behind the target.
Though the U-CPN-Maoists have a strength of 238 in the House, Prachanda has been drawing support of between 240-245 members. But today he ran a tally of 252.
However now the Maoists have managed to split the umbrella grouping of four Terai-based parties, it is still finding it hard to cobble a majority.
CPN-UML candidate Jhala Nath Khanal, who is also the chairman of the party, withdrew his candidature during the first round of voting on July 21 as he could not muster the two-thirds majority support in the House.
CPN-Maoist, which ended its decade-long civil war in 2006, is the single largest party with 238 seats in the assembly, while Nepali Congress has 114 members in the house whose two-year term was extended by one year on May 28.
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