Narayan Dahal from the five-party ruling alliance and Yuvaraj Sharma from the Nepali Congress on Monday registered their candidacies for the National Assembly chair.

Dahal’s candidacy was proposed by Gopal Bahadur Sharki of the CPN (Maoist Centre) and seconded by Devendra Dahal of the CPN-UML, Beduram Bhusal of the CPN (Unified Socialist) and Mohamad Khalid of the Janata Samajbadi Party.

Likewise, Sharma’s candidacy was proposed by Ananda Prasad Dhungana of the Congress and seconded by Kiran Babu Shrestha of the Congress and Shekhar Kumar Singh of the Loktantrik Samajbadi Party.

The vote for the upper house chair is slated for Tuesday.

Dahal, who also is a younger brother to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, was nominated to the National Assembly in 2022 by the then President Bidya Devi Bhandari on the recommendation of then Sher Bahadur Deuba government. He, however, has a long political history.

Dahal, who started his politics in the 1980s, became a Maoist central committee member in 1997. He first entered Parliament in the reinstated House of Representatives after the 2006 People’s Movement. In the 2008 first Constituent Assembly, he was elected from Chitwan-3.

On the other hand, Sharma, who is former Banke district chairperson, was elected lawmaker in 2022.

The ruling alliance holds a comfortable majority with 38 members in the 59-strong upper house, where one position remains vacant.