Kathmandu, December 8:

Talks between the government and Maoist talks teams on the draft of the interim constitution today ended inconclusively.

Both the sides could not reach a consensus on the “process” of elections to be held for the 204 seats of the constituent assembly (CA) on a proportional representation basis. The meeting will continue tomorrow.

According to the November 8 agreement, the seven-party alliance and the Maoists had agreed to hold the CA polls based on the first-past-the-post system for 205 seats and a proportional representation system for 204 seats.

Minister of State for Labour and Transport and member of the government talks team, Ramesh Lekhak, said they were yet to reach an understanding on the process of holding the elections for the 204 seats.

“We mainly discussed whether a single ballot paper is enough for both type of elections — first-past-the-post and proportional representation systems – or there should be separate ballot papers for both the purposes,” Lekhak said.

Asked why they could not finalise the interim statute draft, Maoist leader Dr Baburam Bhattarai said the government team came to the talks table without doing proper homework.

He said the SPA had no vision on how CA elections could be made more “inclusive” and “representative”. The government team is “indifferent” on important political issues and they lack vision on the election process of proportional representation, he said.

He, however, expressed hope that they would finalise the draft by tomorrow and would present it in the eight-party meeting, which is expected to take place on Sunday.

Other issues the talks teams debated today were the contents of the directive principles of the state and fundamental rights of citizens, which, according to Lekhak, are overlapping with each other.