Nepal PM loses vote of trust in lower house

Kathmandu: Nepal's Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal lost a vote of confidence in the House of Representatives on Friday.

Dahal had the support of only 63 lawmakers, far short of the 138 votes needed to pass the floor test in the 275-member chamber.

"As only 63 votes were cast in favor of the confidence motion, which is short of the majority in the House of Representatives, I hereby declare that the Prime Minister's motion to seek a vote of confidence has been rejected," announced Speaker Dev Raj Ghimire.

This is the fifth time for the Prime Minister to seek a floor test since he became the head of a coalition government in late December 2022, reports Xinhua news agency.

As chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center), Dahal rejected calls for his resignation but sought instead a vote of trust again in the lower house after the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) quit and withdrew support to his coalition government on July 3.

The CPN-UML and the main opposition Nepali Congress agreed to join hands for a new coalition on the night of July 1, as the general election in November 2022 produced no majority party in the lower house.

Under the deal between the two largest parties in the lower house, CPN-UML's chairman and former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli shall assume the premiership first and then hand it over to Nepali Congress President and former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba until the next general election in 2027.