Nepal Prime Minister Dahal Passes Parliamentary Confidence Vote

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the Prime Minister of Nepal who took office last December, passed a confidence vote in parliament on the 20th (local time).

According to Nepali media such as Kantipur, Prime Minister Dahal succeeded in gaining the support of a majority of 172 votes in the House of Representatives confidence vote held that day. The total number of seats in the Nepal House of Representatives is 275, and 262 members attended the vote.

Dahal, Prime Minister of Nepal.
Photo by Yonhap News Agency

The confidence vote for the newly appointed prime minister, who has been in office for three months, was held because the coalition led by Dahal recently fractured. The coalition split occurred due to disagreements among the ruling parties related to the presidential election held on the 9th.

In Nepal, a parliamentary system country, the prime minister holds executive power as the head of government, while the president performs the ceremonial role of head of state. The president is elected by federal and provincial legislators.

In this presidential election, Prime Minister Dahal supported Ram Chandra Paudel, the candidate from the opposition Nepali Congress (NC, 89 seats), instead of the coalition partner's candidate from the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist?Leninist) (CPN-UML, 79 seats).

Ultimately, Paudel was elected president, and the CPN-UML and others declared their withdrawal from the coalition. As a result, the coalition led by Dahal, consisting only of the Maoist Centre Nepal Communist Party (CPN-MC, 32 seats) and the Rastriya Janamorcha, shrank to 38 seats.

However, the prime ministership was maintained as major opposition parties such as the NC supported Prime Minister Dahal on that day.