Voting begins to elect president in Nepal

Kathmandu: Nepal's first presidential election after the promulgation of the Constitution began on Wednesday morning.

The voting process in the parliament house began at 11 am and will continue for four hours, Xinhua reported.

CPN(UML) -- Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) -- vice-chairwoman Bidhya Devi Bhandari and Nepali Congress leader Kul Bahadur Gurung are in the fray for the post of president of the federal democratic republic Nepal.

This is the first time in the history of Nepal that any woman leader has filed candidacy for the post of president. Both Bhandari and Gurung filed their nominations for the post on Tuesday.

While Bhandari, 54, is backed by the third largest party Unified CPN Maoist, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal and other parties, Gurung has not received any promise of support from other political parties.

According to the parliament secretariat, the counting of the secret ballot would begin at 2 pm and the results will be out by the evening.

Nepal elected KP Sharma Oli of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) as the prime minister on October 11 after the promulgation of the constitution on September 20.