KATHMANDU, MARCH 8

The Election Commission has completed preparations for the presidential election scheduled for tomorrow.

Ramchandra Paudel of the Nepali Congress and Subas Chandra Nembang of the CPN- UML are the two candidates vying for the presidency.

According to Assistant Polling Officer Amrita Kumari Sharma, voting will take place from 10:00am to 3:00pm tomorrow. There are 875 voters in the voter list, including 325 federal lawmakers and 550 members of provincial assemblies. Sharma said the name of Janata Samajwadi Party-Nepal lawmaker Shahnaz Rahman, who died of heart attack on February 25, was also there as her name had already been listed in the final voter list. The EC is preparing to publish the vote count results tomorrow itself.

'We are trying our best to ensure that the election results are made public by 7:00pm tomorrow,' Sharma added. The EC has set up two polling stations at the Lhotse Hall of the Parliament - one for federal lawmakers and another for members of provincial assemblies.

The EC has deployed 14 employees - seven for each of the two booths.

Voters will not be allowed to carry mobile phones inside the polling station. Sharma said photo journalists will be allowed to take pictures in the morning when voting begins but not after that and EC officials will then provide information regularly till the closing of the voting process.

The president will be elected through an electoral college consisting of federal and provincial lawmakers. Federal and provincial lawmakers have different vote weightage.

Paudel is supported by the nine-party ruling alliance whereas Nembang is supported by the CPN-UML.

Rastriya Swatantra Party that was in the previous seven-party alliance along with the CPN- UML, remains undecided regarding whether to vote as of today.

Although the post of president is a figurehead post, this time the post has become crucial for political parties as President Bidhya Devi Bhandari has blocked the citizenship bill and is sitting on an ordinance brought by the Sher Bahadur Deuba government to facilitate withdrawal of cases against political prisoners.

The ruling CPN-Maoist Centre broke alliance with the UML over who should get the post of president in the power sharing deal. While the CPN-UML continued to claim that it should get the presidency, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and his party leaders argued that there should be a consensus candidate for president and if that was not possible then a candidate who could work within the confines of the constitution.

CPN-MC leaders cited the case of President Bhandari and former president Ram Baran Yadav to argue that there should be a consensus candidate for president who could work within the bounds of the constitution.

Yadav had rejected the then PM Dahal's decision to remove then army chief Rukmangud Katwal following which Dahal resigned as the PM.

Meanwhile Rastriya Prajatantra Party which has 14 lawmakers in the House of Representatives and 28 lawmakers in the provincial assemblies has decided to stay neutral in the presidential election. The RPP has 2,450 vote weightage in the electoral college.

According to RPP Spokesperson Mohan Shrestha the Central Working Committee of the party unanimously decided to stay neutral in the presidential election. Shrestha said the party took a decision to stay neutral in the presidential election mainly for two reasons: the party advocates constitutional monarchy and it believes that the two candidates that are active in politics cannot play a neutral role as envisaged by the constitution.

A version of this article appears in the print on March 9, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.