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Koirala's party bags 30 seats, surges ahead in Nepal

Former prime minister and former Nepali Congress president Krishna Prasad Bhattarai today successfully broke a hoodoo, winning his maiden parliamentary seat as his party surged ahead in the field in the third general elections in the Hindu Himalayan kingdom in nine years, grabbing 30 of the 46 seats filled so far.

Septuagenarian Bhattarai, in his fifty-year-long political career, had so far failed to win a parliament election -- but the wrong was today set right. The Nepali Congress had gone into this general election projecting Bhattarai as the next prime minister if the party is to form the next government in the kingdom.

Considered the mainstream of Nepali politics, the NC also maintained leads in as many as 46 of the 99 constituencies counting-trends of which were available this evening.

Its chief rival for post-poll power -- and the main left entity in the Hindu kingdom -- the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxists- Leninists, had, meanwhile, clinched 11 seats in the 205-member Pratinidhi Sabha, the lower house of the Nepali bicameral parliament, and its nominees led in another 37 constituencies.

The Rashtriya Prajatantra Party, kingmakers in the dissolved house, had also won two seats and its nominees led in another 37 constituencies.

UNI

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