KATHMANDU, DECEMBER 27

The Election Commission has started updating the voters’ list for the upcoming election of the House of Representatives.

The incumbent government has already fixed the dates for mid-term polls — April 30 and May 10. According to EC Spokesperson Raj Kumar Shrestha, necessary groundwork for the upcoming mid-term election has started and voters’ list is being updated.

The constitutional body, responsible for conducting and monitoring elections as well as registering political parties and candidates and reporting election outcomes, has to prepare its action plan to hold the general election in a timely manner.

The Election Commission has already prepared the draft of an action plan to conduct polls. Spokesperson Shrestha shared that they were giving final touches to the draft.

Furthermore, the EC is undertaking budget estimation for the election for a huge number of human resources and other types of resources needed to hold the election.

In the last federal and provincial elections, the EC had spent over Rs 7 billion. The recurring cost of the upcoming general elections is expected to be around the same amount. An additional cost could be incurred this time due to health safety measures to be adopted, opined Shrestha. Once the budget estimation is done, the proposal will be sent to the Ministry of Finance for approval.

The poll body is also taking stock of available machinery such as computers, photocopy machines, vehicles and materials such as ballot paper and ink in district election offices across the country.

There are more than 130 political parties registered with the EC and the number of eligible voters stands at over 15.4 million.