Newly elected members of the assembly that will draft a Constitution aimed at ending years of political turmoil in Nepal were sworn in at the Parliament Building here on Tuesday.
The eldest member of the Constituent Assembly, Surya Bahadur Thapa, administered oath of office and secrecy to 570 members elected through direct voting and proportionate voting system, according to the Parliament Secretariat.
Though 576 members were elected to the Constituent Assembly, five of them won the polls from two constituencies and Mr Thapa himself took oath of office from President Ram Baran Yadav on Monday.
Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Khil Raj Regmi, was present during the swearing-in ceremony.
Five-time Prime Minister and veteran politician Thapa, 86, is also the president of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party.
A majority of the lawmakers took their oath in Nepalese while some three dozen took oath in their mother tongues, including Gurung, Kirati, Maithali, Magar, Tharu and Limbu.
Altogether, 240 members were elected through the first-past-the-post system or direct election on November 19 and 335 members through the proportional representation system. Twenty-six members to be nominated by the cabinet are yet to be finalised.
The new session of the 601-member Constituent Assembly is scheduled to begin on January 26.
Security was tight around the Parliament Building since Monday in the wake of a threat by the breakaway CPN-Maoist, which boycotted the November 19 polls, to stage a sit-in in front of the complex.
The composition of the assembly was delayed after the Maoists alleged fraud in the polls and threatened to boycott the assembly. After weeks of negotiations, they agreed to participate in it.
The Nepali Congress won 196 seats and the CPN-UML got 175 while the Maoists won just 80 of the 575 seats in the polls, finishing third.
Under the proportional representation system, 335 members of the assembly are chosen according to the proportion of votes secured by political parties in the elections.
