The major opposition Centrist Reform Alliance (CRA) will back?a proposal for securing more imperial family members through adoption, sources said Thursday.

At a related internal panel?meeting, the CRA reached an agreement to back the proposal, in which male members on the paternal line of former imperial family branches would be adopted back into the family.

It also reaffirmed support for another proposal that allows female members to retain their imperial family?status after marriage. However, divisions remain in the party over whether the husbands and children of such female members should be given the?status as well.

The CRA plans to hold discussions again Monday and compile its position, as Eisuke Mori, speaker of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, has urged the party to formulate its stance by mid-May. The Lower House speaker has expressed a wish to revise the Imperial House Law during the ongoing Diet session, which is slated to end in mid-July.

The CRA＊s position on the adoption proposal has gained attention, as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner the Japan Innovation Party, also known as Nippon Ishin no Kai, are also in favor of it. The opposition Constitutional Democratic Party, which retains Upper House lawmakers after a partial merger into the CRA, of Japan is against the option. Most parties support allowing female members to retain imperial family status.

About 15 Lower House members of the CRA attended Thursday＊s meeting, in which Hirofumi Ryu, head of the party panel, presented a draft plan based on the result of an internal survey.

The draft calls for allowing female members to retain their familial status and postponing a decision on the status of their husbands and children until a certain date, as well as carefully designing the proposed adoption system, which is expected to cover members from 11 former branches that left the imperial family in 1947.

According to informed sources, a panel member said in the meeting that husbands and children should be given imperial family status while another said that a decision should not be postponed.

Two participants expressed concern over the adoption proposal, but Ryu told reporters after the meeting that the option was broadly accepted.

Ruling-opposition talks on securing a sufficient number of imperial family members are expected to resume later this month after the CRA finishes its internal discussions.