The government has announced Constituent Assembly elections for November 19, 2013.
After three months of deadlock, the Interim Election Council ironed out changes in the electoral law and sent it to the President for ratification.
The logjam was cleared after the Big Four political parties on Monday accepted their failure to agree on amending electoral laws, and agreed to allow the Chief Justice-led government to work out the details to announce an election date. The decision also finally clarified the confusion about whether or not the interim election government should obey the political parties, or act proactively and independently.
Chairman of the Interim Election Government, Khil Raj Regmi, met Chief Election Commissioner Nil Kantha Uprety on Thursday to finalise the details and the council of ministers officially sent an ordinance on changes in electoral laws to President Ram Baran Yadav for formal ratification.
This is expected to finally remove a three-month deadlock between the big four main parties over the question of threshold for proportional representation, delineation of constituencies and whether or not candidates with criminal records should be allowed to contest elections.
However, there are still hurdles along the way, as the smaller parties have their own views on threshold and constituencies. The biggest challenge will be to try to convince the breakaway CPN-M faction of the Maoists to take part in elections. So far, the faction has been trying to bargain hard with the mainstream UCPN(M) party over its role in the party as well as provisions in the new constitution. Negotiations last week between Mohan Baidya and Pushpa Kamal Dahal did not make headway, according to both leaders.
"Fixing the election date without taking our demands into account could lead to conflict," warned CP Gajurel of the CPN(M) on Thursday, "we will not accept forced elections."