KATHMANDU – Nepalis vote on Sunday to choose a new parliament and seven state assemblies hoping to end years of fickle coalitions and complete a tumultuous transition, more than a decade after the end of a civil war.

The two-phase election is also expected to determine the path the country takes in balancing ties with China and India, both of whom are pushing hard to expand influence in the buffer state.

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s centrist Nepali Congress party faces a tight battle against a left alliance between the main group of Maoist former rebels and the opposition Communist UML party.

About 15.4 million eligible voters are tasked to pick a 275-member parliament – 165 through first-past-the-post and 110 through proportional representation – the first under a new constitution agreed after years of wrangling.

Simultaneously, voters will choose representatives to seven provincial assemblies for the first time after Nepal turned into a federal republic and abolished monarchy in 2008.

“These elections will … firmly put the country on the path of stability and prosperity,” Deuba, the country’s tenth prime minister in as many years, told Reuters.

Counting of votes will begin after the second round of polling on Dec 7 and complete results may not be known until the middle of December because of cumbersome counting procedures.

Political analysts say that the left alliance is likely to open up the country further to Chinese investments if they were to come to power in the election.

Already, the UML has said it would hand back the country’s biggest hydro-electric project to China after the Deuba-government, seen as more pro-India, cancelled the deal citing lapses in the contract.

“Our government will revoke the decision after the election,” UML general secretary Ishwar Pokharel said, adding there was nothing wrong in the $2.5 billion deal with China Gezhouba Group Corporation to build a 1,200 megawatt plant.

Soon after the cancellation of the deal, the chairman of Indian state-run power company NHPC Ltd said it could bid for the project, underlining Delhi’s attempts to claw back ground in a country which it has long considered its backyard.

“The performance of the two largest communist parties in the elections could determine the course of Chinese investment in infrastructure projects in Nepal,” said Guna Raj Luintel, editor of the Nagarik daily.

ETHNIC MINORITIES

In March, Nepal received letters of intent worth $8.4 billion from Chinese investors compared with $300 million received from Indian delegates at an investment summit, officials said.

Deuba’s Nepali Congress has struck a loose-knit alliance with ethnic Madhesi minority groups who live in the southern plains and have long complained of being sidelined by the Kathmandu-based main political parties.

Madhesis account for one third of Nepal’s 28 million people and Deuba has promised to amend the constitution to address their grievances if the alliance won the election.

Aid and tourism-dependent Nepal, recovering from a devastating earthquake that killed 9,000 people in 2015, is among the world’s poorest.

The economy, which saw zero growth last year due to instability and the earthquake, is expected to expand by 6.9 per cent this year because of improved power supply and agricultural production, officials said.

MUMBAI – Part of a four-storey building collapsed in the suburbs of the Indian city of Mumbai on Friday, killing at least one person and trapping more than a dozen, police said, the latest in a string of collapses in the financial hub.

“We have rescued six people and recovered one dead body,” said a police official, who declined to be identified.

A National Disaster Response Force team was likely to join the rescue operation, the official said, adding that the reason for the collapse was not known.

The collapse is the latest in a spate of building collapses in the city where many thousands of people occupy dilapidated old buildings, even if city officials have officially labelled them uninhabitable.

In August, 34 people were killed when a 117-year-old six storey-building collapsed. The previous month, about 17 people were killed in a four-storey building collapse.

TOKYO – A local Japanese female politician who brought her baby into an assembly meeting to highlight the issues women face in the workplace has sparked debate after being ejected from the chamber.

Yuka Ogata took her seven-month-old son to join a municipal assembly session of southern Kumamoto city on Wednesday but other lawmakers asked her to leave, according to local media.

“Under the rules, only politicians, staff members and city officials can go on to the assembly floor,” an official at Kumamoto City Assembly told AFP on Friday.

The assembly was delayed for 40 minutes. Ms Ogata joined after leaving the child with a friend, according to public broadcaster NHK.

“Apparently she told the chairman that she wanted to create a woman-friendly work environment,” the official said.

Her move has sparked debate online with supporters saying she was brave and opponents questioning if it was a good idea to bring a baby to a workplace.

“I think her act was wonderful. People wouldn’t take problems seriously” if she hadn’t shown up with the child, one Twitter user said.

“Balancing work and child rearing isn’t about being with a child all the time at a workplace,” said another user, who identified herself as a fellow working mother.

“I really cannot understand her action,” wrote this user.

In May, a breastfeeding senator made Australian political history by becoming the first woman to nurse her newborn baby in the Parliament.

Being able to breastfeed in the chamber follows new rules introduced last year to create a more “family-friendly” Parliament.

Under previous rules, children were technically banned in the Australian Parliament.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made increasing female participation in the workforce a key plank of his “Abenomics” strategy to reboot Japan’s once-mighty economy.

However, women are still underrepresented in politics with only 47 of the 465 members of the lower house.

According to statistics compiled by the Swiss-based Inter-Parliamentary Union, this ratio of 10.1 per cent places Japan below Myanmar and Gambia.