KATHMANDU, MAY 12

A large number of people have left the Kathmandu Valley for their hometowns in different parts of the country to take part in the local level elections taking place at all 753 units simultaneously tomorrow, Friday.

According to police, the Valley witnessed an exodus of 83 thousand people on Wednesday alone, two days before the voting day. Kathmandu Valley Traffic Police Office's deputy superintendent of police Bal Narsingh Rana said over 550 thousand people left the Valley between May 4 and 11. Today too, a more number of passengers were seen home-bound in different places of the Valley than the number of those entering here.

Political parties have reportedly managed the travel of voters to their hometowns in this election and some have managed on their own.

People are observing public holidays for consecutive four days beginning from tomorrow as the government has announced a holiday on the voting day on Friday and it will be followed by a new provision of a two-day public weekend: Saturday and Sunday, a holiday for the Buddha Jayanti on Monday. It seems that people want to utilize the time to exercise their franchise to choose their representatives to the local government for the next five- year term.

The total number of voters for this election is 17 million 733 thousand 723 and a total number of voting stations is 10,756 followed by 21,955 polling booths. The government categorized 2,946 polling stations as highly sensitive, 4,423 as sensitive and 3,387 as less sensitive and the security arrangements are in place accordingly.

Following a large exodus of the people, roads in the Kathmandu Valley have sparse traffic than usual days. Thapathali, Singhadurbar, Tripureshwor, Maitighar, Koteshwor, Gaushala and Kalanki Chowk areas which used to see heavy traffic flow and traffic jam in usual days have sparse traffic.

Drivers say that they did not face a frequent traffic jam lately and a limited number of traffic police personnel have been mobilized to deal with the Valley traffic system.