Kathmandu (dpa) - The Nepali government announced fresh elections for November 22 after missing Sunday's deadline to write a constitution.
"Regressive forces prevented us from writing an inclusive constitution on time," Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai said in a midnight address to the nation.
"We will make an attempt on November 22 to elect a fresh constituent assembly to make another attempt to write a new constitution, which address the aspirations of all the people."
Bhattarai called an emergency cabinet meeting to propose the election date as the deadline expired.
"I believe that all sides will cooperate in holding fresh elections for a fresh people's mandate," he said.
Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxists-Leninists (UML) and some fringe parties voiced disapproval of the call for elections.
"The Maoists were never serious about discussing the major issues in the constitution, which is why we don't have a constitution today," Nepali Congress leader Ram Chandra Poudel said.
The term of the Constituent Assembly, a body elected in 2008 to write a constitution, expired Sunday without completing its mandate of writing a constitution.
The deadline expired as the political parties, which had been engaged in discussions on the disputed issue of state restructuring, failed to arrive at an agreement.
The Constituent Assembly has had its two-year term extended four times since it was first elected in 2008, two years after the end of a decade-long civil war with Maoist rebels.
Political parties have been unable to bridge their differences on sticking points including how to demarcate and name the new federal states, which will be enshrined in the constitution.
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