BAJURA, MAY 21

The vote counting of Budhiganga Rural Municipality in the district has been stalled in the midst of allegations of irregularities and Election Commission's indecision on the same.

In the eight local levels of Bajura district, results of voting have been made public while only Budhiganga rural municipality has been left in lurch.

Local level elections had taken place in Budhiganga Rural Municipality as scheduled nationwide by election commission. However, vote counting has yet not begun as Nepali Congress cadres are demanding a re-election on grounds of allegations of irregularities while CPN-UML representatives have taken a stand that vote counting should proceed in status quo.

Even after a week of the elections, the election commission has not decided on further proceedings.

There is a looming controversy in the six wards among the ten in the rural municipality. The locals lament that in wards 2,3,4,5, 7 and 9 the elections were rigged.

In wards 2, 3, 5 and 9 CPN-UML cadres had taken control of the booths and voted in their favour while the same was seen in wards 4 and 7 by Nepali Congress party workers.

In all of these six contentious booths, incidents of clash, physical assault on the candidates and attempt to hurt voters have been reported.

In ward 7 at the Sharda secondary school polling station, the candidate vying for the post of ward chairperson -- Manname Bista -- of CPN-UML claimed that he had to abadon the polling station after he was physically assaulted after which he had to remain in hiding the entire day.

Similarly, it has been learnt that, the deployed security personnel fled the polling stations in wards 2, 3, 5 and 9 in afternoon without attending the ballot boxes. Later, all the ballot boxes were taken to the rural municipality-based election officer's office along with the deployed election officials.