President Bidhya Devi Bhandari on the recommendation of the Council of Ministers has dissolved the House of Representatives (HoR) and announced the dates for mid-term elections. The mid-term elections will be held in two stages on November 12 and 19.
A meeting of the Council of Ministers held on Friday midnight had decided to dissolve the House of Representatives and hold mid-term elections. As per this decision, the government had submitted a recommendation to President Bhandari seeking dissolution of the HoR and the announcement of dates for mid-term elections. Within a couple of hours of receiving the recommendation the president issued a statement announcing the dissolution of the HoR and the dates for the mid-term elections.
Since a new government could not be formed as per Article 76 (5) of the Constitution of Nepal, the Council of Ministers had decided to recommend the president to take a decision as per Article 76 (7) of the Constitution.
The statement issued by the President’s Office mentions that the Council of Ministers had recommended President Bhandari to dissolve the House of Representatives as per Article 76 (7) of the Constitution and announce the dates of mid-term elections in two phases with the first phase to be concluded by November 12 (Friday) and the second phase by November 19 (Friday).
The statement says that the dates for the mid-term elections have been announced according to the recommendation of the Council of Ministers.
Earlier, on Friday the president had rejected both Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba’s claims to form the government citing that both the claims did not hold sufficient ground to confirm that they would win the vote of confidence in the Parliament to be appointed the prime minister, hence both the claims had been rejected.
