LEADERS of the country’s victorious Left Alliance met President Vidyabhani Bhandari today to discuss forming a new government.

It followed the resignation of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, of the Congress party, a day after the communist landslide in the November-December elections was confirmed.

The Left Alliance of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) will now form a government, with CPN-UML chairman KP Sharma Oli having been elected prime minister.

In last year’s election the CPN-UML received a third of the proportional vote, itself beating the Congress party by about 0.5 per cent, and the CPN-Maoist received 13.6 per cent.

However, a disagreement between the beaten Congress and the communists over how to elect parliament’s upper house, with Congress trying to ensure it had at least some seats, caused the process to drag on.

The communists have been a major force since the successful overthrow of the country’s monarchy 10 years ago and a new constitution was agreed in 2015 that requires at least a third of MPs to be women.