KATHMANDU, MAY 14

In most of the voting centres across the country, voting was conducted peacefully on Friday and counting of votes began on Saturday at most of the local levels.

Counting of votes has started from Ward No 1 in Lalitpur Metropolitan City after the decision of an all-party meeting held at 7:00am.

Chiribabu Maharjan from the Nepali Congress, Hari Krishna Byanjankar from the CPN-UML and Asta Bahadur Maharjan from the Rastriya Prajatantra Party have contested for the mayoral post of Lalitpur Metropolitan City while Manjali Shakya (Astha) from CPN-UML, Baburaj Bajracharya from the CPN-Maoist Centre and Swornima Shakya from the Rastriya Prajatantra Party are vying for the post of deputy mayor.

Likewise, counting of votes has started in 11 of the 17 municipalities in Morang district too from today.

Counting has started in Belbari, Urlabari, Rangeli, Sunvarshi and Letang municipalities of Morang, said Leban Kashyap Adhikari, chief of the provincial election office in Biratnagar.

Similarly, other rural municipalities where counting of votes has started are in Jahda, Dhanpalathan, Gramthan, Katahari, Kanepokhari and Miklajung.

Meanwhile, preparations are under way to start the counting of votes in the Biratnagar Metropolitan City, according to information officer at the Chief Election Office, Biratnagar, Hom Bahadur Budathoki. In Biratnagar Metropolitan City, out of 133,142 voters, 89,678 (67.35 per cent) had cast their votes.

Counting of votes has started in four out of six municipalities of the district.

An all-party meeting is being held to begin counting in the two remaining municipalities as well, said District Election Officer Goma Dhamala Ghimire. The counting of votes in Godavari Municipality and in Bagmati, Konjesom and Mahankal rural municipalities started last night.

The counting will start from 11:00am today in Mahalakshmi Municipality Counting of votes of local level election in Gokarneshwor Municipality has started.

The counting of votes has started from Ward No 1 of the municipality, where 800 votes have been counted, said Election Officer Ranju Gautam.

According to the preliminary results, the Nepali Congress candidate for the post of mayor and deputy mayor have taken the lead while CPN-UML candidate is leading in the post of ward chair.

Of the total 33,989 voters in the municipality, 24,242 votes cast their votes, This is 71.32 per cent voter turnout.

Similarly, Vote count in Pokhara Metropolitan City has also begun at 4:15pm today evening. It started two hours late due to various technical causes.

The count began from Pokhara-12, said Nil Prasad Paneru, information officer for the office of chief election officer. Out of the total 207,712 eligible voters in the metropolis, the voters turnout was 143,228, he said.

CPN (Unified Socialist)'s Dhanraj Acharya and the CPN-UML's Krishna Thapa are contesting for a mayoral seat in the metropolis.

A version of this article appears in the print on May 15, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.