The Iraqi parliament on Wednesday failed for the third time to elect a new president after failing to reach a quorum amid ongoing political disputes, Xinhua reported.

At the beginning of the session, the Speaker of the Council of Representatives (Parliament) announced that the quorum set at two-thirds of the house's 329 members had not been achieved to elect the president, the parliament's media office said in a statement.

Earlier, the parliament set March 30 as the date for a new parliament session to elect the president, with some 40 candidates competing for the post.

The repeated failure to elect a new president came amid a political row among Shiite parties.

Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Sadrist Movement has vowed to form a new national majority from the winning parties in the elections, after his followers took the lead with 73 seats out of 329-seat parliament in the elections held on Oct. 10, 2021.

Al-Sadr's pro-Iranian rivals and some other parties, however, want to form a consensus government to include all political blocs, as was the situation in the successive governments after 2003.