Kathmandu: The election to the House of Representatives and the Provincial Assembly is about to begin in a few minutes from now.
Voting will be held in a single phase from 7:00 am to 5:00 pm in all the 77 districts of the country. There are a total of 17,988,570 voters who are eligible to vote in the election.
Likewise, 22,227 polling stations in 10,892 polling centres have been established for the election. Arrangements have been made to give priority to senior citizens, people with disabilities and the pregnant for the voting.
This is the second election of the House of Representatives and the Provincial Assembly after the country adopted the Federal form of governance.
Altogether 246,960 employees and security personnel have been deployed for management of the voting.
A total of 2,412 are in the fray for the first past the post system of the election to the House of Representatives.
Similarly, 2,199 candidates are enlisted for the proportional election system. For the provincial assembly, 3,224 are in the competition for the first-past-the-post election system, while 3,708 names are list in the final closed list for the proportional election system.
A total of 39.9 million ballot papers have been printed for the first-past-the-post system of the House of Representatives and Provincial Assembly and 40.6 million ballot papers for the proportional election system.
Meanwhile, 7,219 persons from 44 national and 12 from two international organizations are observing the elections to help enhance the credibility of the election. The observer will supervise the elections in 165 constituencies of the House of Representatives and 330 constituencies of the Provincial Assembly.
The Election Commission has prepared to collect the ballot boxes soon after the voting is over and start counting the votes immediately. In the first phase, the votes for the FPTP system of the House of Representatives will be counted. After that, votes casted for the FPTP in the provincial assembly will be counted. This will be followed by counting of the proportional representation (PR) votes of the House of Representatives and the Provincial Assembly will be counted.
The EC plans to complete the counting of FPTP votes within three days.
