Prachanda loses seat, Nepali Congress takes lead in vote count

Maoist supremo Prachanda suffered a double blow today as he was handed a humiliating defeat in one of the two seats he contested and his party trailed at a distant third with Nepali Congress taking a lead in trends in counting of votes to choose Nepal's new Constituent Assembly.
The Sushil Koirala-led Nepali Congress (NC) was leading in 74 constituencies while its rival CPN-UML was ahead in 54 seats. The Unified CPN-Maoist was third, leading in 20 seats.
Official results for the polls to elect an assembly that will draft Nepal's new constitution were also announced for 27 seats with NC winning 14 seats and CPN-UML bagging 13.

Nepali Congress has won in 5 out of the ten seats here, officials said.
The counting will lead to the formation of a 601-member Constituent Assembly, including 240 elected under a direct voting system. Proportionate voting will elect members to 335 seats and the remaining 26 members will be nominated by the government.
In what came as a setback to Prachanda, he and his daughter were handed down humiliating defeats in the polls.

Nepali Congress candidate Rajan K C beat the first post-war Prime Minister, securing 20,392 votes and restricting Prachanda to 12,859 in the Kathmandu Constituency 10. Third candidate in contention CPN-UML's Surendra Manandhar also secured more votes than Prachanda (13,619 votes).

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known as Prachanda, had won from the same constituency in 2008 by a big margin. Rajan was his nearest rival then.
Prachanda, 58, is also contesting from Siraha Constituency 5, where he was leading the vote count.
In Kathmandu constituency No 1, Nepali Congress general secretary Prakash Man Singh won the election by defeating his nearest rival Renu Dahal, daughter of Prachanda, by a huge margin.
Meanwhile, Unified CPN-Maoist today demanded a suspension of the vote count, alleging conspiracy after trends showed the party was trailing at the third position.
"We urge the election commission to stop the counting," Prachanda told reporters. "We accept (the) people's verdict but cannot accept conspiracy and poll-rigging."

The Nepali Congress party asked the UCPN-Maoist to show sportsmanship and honour the verdict given by the people.
"Be a responsibly political party and honour the verdict of the Nepali people," Nepali Congress vice president Ramchandra Poudyal told reporters here.