Nepali Congress vote counting on

Kathmandu, March 9

As vote counting of Nepali Congress Central Working Committee members under the 25-member open category continues today, Khum Bahadur Khadka, outgoing General Secretary Prakash Man Singh, Shekhar Koirala, Bimalendra Nidhi, Pradip Giri and youth leader Pradeep Paudel continue to lead.

The election committee of the party counted 150 ballot papers till 7:00pm today and will resume counting at 10:00am tomorrow, according to secretary of the party’s headquarters Pradip Parajuli.

Altogether 3,148 votes were cast in the polls held on March 6.

Counting of reservation seats for one Muslim, two Dalit women and three Dalits will also resume tomorrow morning, according to election committee coordinator Radheshyam Adhikari.

Although, the counting was scheduled to begin at 10:00am today, it began at around 1:00pm after the election committee faced difficulty in making the agents of all 90 contenders participate in the counting process.

The counting started after the agents’ demanded that the counting process be shown through projector, according to Parajuli. The complete result of 25 members will likely be completed by Friday, according to him.

Sher Bahadur Deuba, Shashanka Koirala and Sita Devi Yadav were already elected as party president, general secretary and treasurer.

According to secretary Parajuli, the following contenders were in the top 33 list till 150 ballot papers were counted:

Khum Bahadur Khadka, 94; Prakash Man Singh, 90; Shekhar Koirala, 89; Bimalendra Nidhi, 88; Pradip Giri, 87; Pradip Paudel, 87; Mahesh Acharya, 87; Bal Krishna Khand, 86; KB Gurung, 85;  Purna Bahadur Khadka, 84; Ramesh Lekhak, 79; Shankar Bhandari, 78; Sujata Koirala, 78;

Prakash Sharan Mahat, 77; Minendra Rijal, 77; Gopal Man Shrestha, 76; Narayan Khadka, 75; Ram Sharan Mahat, 74; Bishwa Prakash Sharma, 74; Bal Bahadur KC, 73; Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, 73; NP Saud, 71; Chandra Bhandari, 71; Dhana Raj Gurung, 70; Udaya Shumsher Rana, 68; Dina-Mahalaxmi Upadhaya, 66; Badri Pande, 66; Jip Tshring Lama, 62; Padam Narayan Chaudhari, 60; Manmohan Bhattarai, 59; Govinda Raj Pokharel, 56; Ashok Koirala, 55;   and Govinda Raj Joshi, 55.