India Today:
Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was elected on Wednesday with a huge margin of votes for the House of Representatives for the seventh consecutive time, with his ruling Nepali Congress party leading in the election tally by winning 19 seats so far.
Deuba’s predecessor and opposition CPN-UML leader K P Sharma Oli defeated his nearest Nepali Congress rival Khagendra Adhikari by a wide margin of 28,574 votes. Oli was elected from Jhapa-5 after receiving 52,315 votes, highest number of votes received by any candidate in the November 20 Parliamentary elections.
Deuba’s Nepali Congress (NC) has so far won 19 seats and is leading in 37 others, while Oli’s CPN-UML has won 7 seats and was ahead in 37. The NC allies – CPN-Maoist won 3 seats and is leading in 15 others, CPN-Unified Socialist won 2 and is leading in 8 while Loktantrik Samajwadi Party has won one and is leading in 2 seats.
The CPN-UML partners – the Rastriya Prajatantra Party and Janata Samajwadi Party – have won one seat each and are leading in four seats each. The newly-formed Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) has so far won four seats and is leading in five constituencies, emerging as the third force in the general elections held on Sunday.
The counting of votes started on Monday. Deuba secured 25,534 votes against his nearest rival Sagar Dhakal, an independent candidate in the Dadeldhura constituency in far west Nepal. Dhakal received just 1,302 votes.
Deuba has never lost any parliamentary election in the five decades of his political career. The 77-year-old Nepali Congress president Deuba is currently holding the post of Prime Minister for the fifth term.
