KATHMANDU: Twelve political parties are set to contest the upcoming National Assembly election on January 26. According to spokesperson at Election Commission, Shaligram Sharma, 12 political parties have registered for the National Assembly election.
Nine political parties have registered for the election in all the states and three political parties have registered for one particular state.
According to the Commission, Nepali Congress, CPN (UML), CPN (Maoist Center), CPN (Unified Socialist), Rastriya Janamorcha, Nepal Loktantrik Party, Janata Samajwadi Party, Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) and Nepal Pariwar Dal will participate in all the states. Loktantrik Samajwadi Party will contest on Province No. 2 and Far Western Province, Nepal Labour and Peasant’s Party will contest in Bagmati and Historic Prajatantrik Janata Party Nepal will participate in Province No. 2.
The Commission had given a deadline for the registration of political parties for the election of National Assembly members from December 16 to today. There is a constitutional provision that political parties must be registered for each election purpose.
The election official has already been appointed for the election and polling stations. There are 2,025 voters for the election, including members of the state assembly and the chief and deputy chief of the municipality. In the election, the weightage of votes of the members of the state assembly will be 48 and the weitage of votes of the chief and deputy chief of the municipality will be 18.
There will be 1,493 local level voters and 532 state assembly voters in the election for 19 posts. From this upcoming election, seven women, three Dalits, two persons with disabilities or minorities and seven other groups will be elected.
The term of eight members of the CPN (UML), four members of the CPN (Unified Socialist), four members of the CPN (Maoist Center) and three members of the Nepali Congress is coming to an end on March 4. The term of Ram Narayan Bidari who was nominated by the President as an expert will also end on the same date.
There is a constitutional provision that one-third of the members of the 59-member National Assembly, representing the intelligentsia, expire every two years. Although the term of office of a member of the National Assembly is six years, for the first time the term was determined by a round of voting.
There is a provision that one-third of the members of the National Assembly must be elected 35 days before the end of their term. The nomination of the candidate for the election will be registered on January 4 and the candidate will be given the election symbol on January 9.
