The five political parties in the ruling coalition finally presented their demands for seats for the November 20 federal and provincial polls at the meeting of their task force formed to make seat-sharing arrangements on Thursday.

Earlier in the morning, the top leaders of the coalition had told the task force members to study the situation of all the constituencies.

“During today’s meeting of the task force all the parties presented their demand for shares,” said Himalal Puri, a member of the task force representing Rastriya Janamorcha.

Puri said the Congress demanded 100 seats, the CPN (Maoist Centre) 60, the CPN (Unified Socialist) 40, the Janata Samajbadi Party claimed 32 seats and the Rastriya Janamorcha two seats. With this the total number of seats will be 234 but the five parties will have to share 165 seats among them under the direct election system for the House of Representatives, where 100 members will be elected under the proportional representation system.

“But when they counted the constituencies to which they laid claim that exceeded the number of seats up for grabs,” said Puri.

The top leaders of the ruling coalition had asked the task force members on Thursday morning to study the existing status of all the 165 constituencies under the direct election system for the House of Representatives and 330 seats for the seven provincial assemblies.

They had instructed the task force members to find out in detail the status of all the parties in all the constituencies in which members are elected through the direct election system.

“The top leaders of the coalition asked us to prepare a detailed report about the existing situation of the parties in all the constituencies,” said Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, a member of the task force. “We will present our report by Friday evening.”

Among the total 550 seats in the seven provincial assemblies, 220 will be elected under the proportional representation system.

Leaders of the ruling coalition, who had asked the 11-member task force to finalise its seat-sharing arrangements within mid-August, have been regularly meeting since Monday, failing to find any modality.

“I think managing seats will take a few more days for the task force as the parties have just presented their claims,” said Rakam Chemjong, a member of the task force representing the Janata Samajbadi Party.

Chemjong said they would try to narrow down the differences from Friday and if they fail they will ask the top leaders to finalise it.

“Once we complete the seats for the House of Representatives, we will start discussions on provincial assemblies,” said Chemjong.