Membership in the hotly debated constitutent assembly will be decided Tuesday during a joint session of Parliament's upper and lower houses (the Shura Council and People's Assembly respectively).

Out of about 1,300 nominated candidates, 100 members will be chosen for the body tasked with drafting Egypt's post-uprising constitution.

Eligible to vote are elected members of Parliament's two houses, which means that 688 parliamentarians will potentially be voting, 498 from the People's Assembly and 190 from the Shura Council.

Parliamentary speaker Saad El-Katatni is chairing the meeting, which comes after weeks of tense negotiations concluded Monday with the issuance of a draft law outlining the framework of the constitution-drafting body.

By the end of Monday's meeting, liberal and leftist parties, including the Egyptian-bloc, staged a second walkout, giving up their seats to register their opposition to Islamist domination of the assembly and allow for women, youth and Coptic Christian to have a greater presence.

According to the arrangement agreed to by various parties represented in Parliament and the ruling military council last Wednesday, the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) will hold 16 seats; the Salafist Nour Party eight; the liberal Wafd Party five; the Free Egyptians party two; the Egyptian Social Democratic Party two; and one each for the Wasat Party, the Nasserist Karama Party, the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, the liberal Reform and Development Party and the Islamist Building and Development Party.

• This article has been amended since publication to correct the number of constituent assembly nominees.