Nepalese Parliament's fourth bid to elect a prime minister fell flat on Friday as both Maoist chief Prachanda and his NC rival Ram Chandra Poudyal failed to win simple majority in the 601-strong House, plunging the country into a deeper political crisis in the absence of a government.
Fity-five-year-old Prachanda, a former prime minister, managed to bag only 213 votes, with 99 members opposing his candidature.
Interestingly, 26 Maoist lawmakers did not turn up for the voting, which came more than five weeks after Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal resigned following intense Maoist pressure.
Poudyal, 65, also failed to touch the magic figure of 301, receiving just 122 votes in favour and 245 against, forcing the House to fix another round of voting for August 18.
Friday's election came a day after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's special envoy Shyam Saran held hectic parleys with top leaders of Nepal in an effort to defuse the political tension in the country.
During the third round of voting on August 2, Prachanda had secured 259 votes while Poudyal got 124.
Hours before the fourth round of voting on Friday, a smaller Communist party having nine members in Parliament witnessed a split.
The new party named CPN-ML (Socialist) was formed after the split of the CPN-Marxist Leninist led by C P Mainali, who accused the Maoists of hatching conspiracy to divide his group.
Ahead of the voting, the CPN-UML with the strength of 109 and the Madhesi alliance with the combine strength of 84 and other smaller parties decided to remain neutral.
The Madhesi alliance of four parties -- Madhesi People's Rights Forum (MPRF), MPRFDemocratic, Terai Madhes Democratic Party and Sadbhavana Party -- had maintained they would back the party that provided a clear roadmap to conclude the peace process and addressed demands of the Indian-origin community from the southern Terai region, including greater economic and political rights for them.
However, the two major parties in the fray have refused to give a clear commitment to the Madhesi parties on declaring the southern plains as a single autonomous region.
The country has been in political limbo since the June 30 resignation of Madhav Kumar Nepal, who is currently heading a caretaker government.
CPN-Maoist, which ended its decade-long civil war in 2006, is the single largest party with 238 seats in the Constituent Assembly, while Nepali Congress has 114 members in the House whose two-year term was extended by one year on May 28.
The first round of voting for prime minister was held on July 21 while the second round took place on July 23. Both Prachanda and Poudyal had been defeated in all four rounds so far.
