Kathmandu, September 21 The Election Commission has decided to send the final designs of ballot papers to be used for proportional representation polls to the printing press by October 3. The poll panel has decided to use seven types of proportional representation ballot papers for provincial assembly elections in seven provinces. This means that the EC will print one ballot paper for both the PR elections of the provincial assembly and the House of Representatives but the symbols of the parties contesting provincial PR elections may vary in seven provinces, as different parties can contest in different provinces, EC Commissioner Ila Sharma told THT. “We have an understanding to use seven types of ballot papers in the PR elections,” said Sharma. She added that all political parties that had applied to contest proportional representation elections would not be contesting from all seven provinces, so the EC would use separate ballot papers in seven provinces. Another EC Commissioner Narendra Dahal said the poll panel had finalised designs of the PR ballot papers. “Voters will have to cast two votes in the same ballot paper — one for the party contesting the provincial assembly polls and another for the party contesting the parliamentary elections,” said Dahal. He added that the poll panel had also reached a tentative agreement to use single ballot paper for the first-past-the-post elections. As in PR ballot papers, voters will have to cast two votes in the same ballot paper — one for provincial FPTP candidate and another for parliamentary FPTP candidate. He said the two types of election symbols would be separated by a vertical line in both FPTP and PR ballot papers. He added that the EC had been working to finalise designs of ballot papers for FPTP elections as well. Earlier, major political parties — the Nepali Congress, the CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre — and the EC had agreed to make only two kinds of ballot papers for the provincial and parliamentary elections. The government has decided to hold provincial and parliamentary polls simultaneously in two phases — on November 26 and December 7.