Nepal to choose its Vice President on March 17

Nepal's Vice-Presidential election is scheduled to be conducted on March 17 and the post should be filled up by a candidate from a different gender or ethnic community than that of the just-elected President, the Election Commission said on Friday.

According to the Constitution, the Vice President must be from either a gender or community different from the President.

As the president-elect Ram Chandra Poudel is a male from the Khas-Arya hill community, the vice-presidential candidate should now be from a different gender or community.

Meanwhile, the Janata Samajwadi Party which is the sixth-largest party in the House of Representatives with 12 seats has decided to field Lawmaker Ram Sahaya Yadav as its Vice-Presidential candidate.

Yadav belongs to the Madhesi community representing the southern plains of Nepal. Eight other political parties who extended support to Ram Chandra Poudel in the presidential election are also likely to vote for Yadav.

So far, no other candidate has publicly expressed a desire to contest the election for the post of Vice-President.

Although the Nagarik Unmukti Party (NUP) has decided to nominate 40-year-old Ranjita Shrestha, the chairperson of the party, as the vice presidential candidate, she is seen as unfit to be a vice presidential candidate.

However, according to the Constitution of Nepal, a candidate for the country's president and vice president must be at least 45 years of age, MyRepublica newspaper reported.

According to the instruction given to the Election Officer, the Commission said that as Ram Chandra Poudel was elected the President in the cluster of Khas Arya, the Vice-President candidate should be from different gender or ethnic community to go by the spirit of inclusiveness, reads the press statement issued by Commission's Spokesperson Shaligram Sharma Poudyal.

Poudel, a common candidate of the eight-party alliance that included Nepali Congress and Prime Minister 'Prachanda'-led CPN (Maoist Centre) was elected as the Himalayan nation's president on Thursday, receiving the vote of 214 lawmakers of parliament and 352 provincial assembly members.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)