Kathmandu, May 17

The Election Commission today set up nine more stations at the City Hall to speed up vote counting for Kathmandu Metropolitan City.

Although the EC had said yesterday that it was going to add more stations to count votes in some places, it could do so for Kathmandu Metropolitan City only. The EC set up five counting stations at City Hall at around 4:30pm and five more at 8:00pm as per the decision of an all-party meeting in the evening.

Chief Election Officer for Kathmandu District, Purushottam Dhakal, told THT that they could set up nine more counting stations for KMC only in the evening as managing human resources and some other logistics took time. “It is not easy to find experienced employees to count votes,” he said and added that he now expected vote counting to be over in four to five days.

Pushkar Pandey, polling agent for Nepali Congress’ mayoral candidate Raju Raj Joshi said the EC could count only around 140 votes in an hour yesterday, but since 10 more stations were added today, they could  significantly speed up  vote counting.

Earlier today, Chief Election Commissioner Ayodhi Prasad Yadav had reached the City Hall and enquired about the pace of vote counting. He went to the City Hall after people complained of sluggish counting. He directed the officials concerned to arrange additional separate desks and count votes simultaneously. Yadav also directed them to set up electronic display for people to see the poll results.

Speaking at an interaction programme here today, Yadav said that the final results of the first phase of civic polls would come within a week. He said the polls panel had deployed additional officials to speed up vote counting in all four metropolitan cities—KMC, Lalitpur Metropolitan City, Lekhnath Metropolitan City and Bharatpur Metropolitan City.

Meanwhile, the EC has sought clarification from seven under-secretaries, who failed to comply with EC’s direction.

Issuing a press release today, the EC said those under-secretaries did not even receive its appointment letters.

The EC said it had directed under-secretaries Jeevan Ram Puri, serving at High Powered Committee for Integrated Development of the Bagmati Civilisation; Kashinath Bhattarai, serving at Office of Auditor General; Prahlad Prasad Pudasaini serving at the President’s Office; Khem Prasad Upadhyay, serving at the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development; Shivaram Bhattarai of Pushpalal Mid-Hill Highway Project; Rajendra Prasad Ghimire serving at Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport; and Rohit Kumar Dhungana of Narayanhity Palace Museum to furnish clarifications within 15 days.