Nepal, March 9 -- The Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) is maintaining a strong lead in the ongoing vote counting under the proportional representation (PR) system for the House of Representatives election, according to the latest results released by the Election Commission (EC).

A total of 8,653,769 votes have been counted nationwide so far. The RSP leads with 4,149,012 votes (47.9%), followed by Nepali Congress with 1,389,165 votes (16.1%) and CPN-UML with 1,172,315 votes (13.5%).

Other parties' vote shares are: Nepali Communist Party - 608,858 (7.0%), Shram Sanskriti Party - 299,496 (3.5%), Rastriya Prajatantra Party - 281,935 (3.3%), Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal - 131,829 (1.5%), Rastriya Pariwartan Party - 125,575 (1.5%), and Janamat ...