Nepal election: Poll Panel to Hand over Final Results to President Next Week

Kathmandu: Nepal’s Election Commission has started preparations to present the final results of the provincial and parliamentary elections by December 14 as the counting of votes under First Past the Post was completed on Monday.

With the counting of votes for Proportional Representation (PR) underway and expected to end by Tuesday, the Election Commission (EC) has started preparations to submit the report to Nepal’s President Bidya Devi Bhandari in the next ten days.

“Vote count of Bajura, Dolakha, and Syangja under the PR is still underway. The electoral officers have been instructed to expedite the counting process without any error and complete it as soon as possible,” Nepal’s Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Thapaliya said.

“Upon receiving all the results, the electoral body will send out letters to all political parties to send names of candidates who will be elected under the PR system,” he added.

The political parties have already submitted a list of candidates under the PR system and this time they will submit the name to the EC as per electoral laws. The parties now would have three days instead of a week to give the names. Thapaliya said as per the legal provisions, the parties usually are granted a week but this time it has been slashed to expedite the process.

“In case the parties send the names within the provided timeframe, we will be able to submit the report to President by December 14,” he said.

According to EC, results for 165 constituencies for the House of Representatives (HoR) and the 330 constituencies from the Province Assembly have been declared. The Nepali Congress has won 57 seats in HoR under first-past-the-post (FPTP) while the Communist Party of Nepal- Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) has secured 44 seats.

The CPN-Maoist Centre stood third with 18 seats while the CPNUnified Socialist secured 10 seats. The Samajbadi Party, Rashtriya Prajatantra Party, and Rashtriya Swatantra Party won 7 seats each.

The Nepali Congress won 111 constituencies under the FPTP system while the CPN-UML secured 91 seats, CPN-Maoist Center 53, and CPNUnified Socialist 15 seats. Meanwhile, Janata Samajbadi Party and Rashtriya Prajatantra Party won 11 seats each in Province Assembly.

After the electoral body dispatches details of newly elected members of parliament, they will be sworn in a special ceremony, according to the parliament secretariat. The eldest member of the parliament will administer an oath of office and secrecy to the new members. Before that, the eldest member of Parliament will be sworn in by the President.

Soon after the oath-taking ceremony, the new members will participate in the first meeting of the newly-elected House.

The election to choose the Speaker will be held within 15 days after the first meeting of the House of Representatives.