Kathmandu, July 11 The Nepali Congress and the CPN-Maoist Centre today tried in vain to persuade the CPN-UML to support the constitution amendment bill. During a three-party meeting held at Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s residence, CPN-MC Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal proposed three alternative ways to end the political deadlock regarding constitution amendment. The proposals were, however, rejected by the main opposition party, which stressed that the amendment should be postponed until the provincial and general elections. Dahal proposed that the three major parties should forge consensus on the amendment bill and ink a package deal with the Rastriya Janata Party–Nepal. He added that in case consensus could not be forged, the amendment bill should be put to vote in the Parliament and the result should be acceptable to all sides, including the RJP-N. The third proposal floated by Dahal was to conduct the third phase of local level elections without changing the number of local levels in the Tarai districts and putting the amendment to vote only after forging of consensus with RJP-N on the number of local levels in the Tarai. According to a source in the PMO, PM Deuba supported Dahal’s third proposal and added that he would try to convince RJP-N. According to CPN-MC leader Narayan Kaji Shrestha, the UML representative, led by party Chairman KP Sharma Oli, were positive on the third alternative. According to UML Vice-chair Bhim Rawal, his party proposed to put the amendment bill to vote only after the provincial and general elections. To meet the constitutional obligation the government has to conduct all three types of elections before January 21. Meanwhile, Nepali Congress leader Bimalendra Nidhi said the amendment bill would not be put to vote in the present circumstances, as “two-third majority for the bill was not possible since the UML was not backing it”.