Keeping ballot boxes safe a challenge: CEC Yadav
Kathmandu, November 9
Chief Election Commissioner Ayodhi Prasad Yadav today said the Election Commission faced a challenging job transporting ballot boxes to offices of chief returning officers and returning officers and keeping them safely there for 10 days.
The EC plans to begin counting votes of the first phase of provincial and parliamentary polls, scheduled for November 26, after the second phase of provincial and parliamentary polls are over on December 7.
Addressing an interaction with government secretaries, including Chief Secretary Lok Darshan Regmi, here today, CEC Yadav said
the poll panel was aware that transporting all ballot boxes to vote counting centres and keeping them safely in a systematic and reliable manner was a challenging task.
The EC stated that though Nepal Police would provide security to ballot boxes, it would seek the help of Armed Police Force and Nepali Army, if needed.
Yadav said expensive poll campaign by the parties and candidates were other challenges for the poll panel. He said the poll panel had sought clarifications from a candidate, who was caught distributing money to voters to vote in his favour.
He sought help from all stakeholders to make the upcoming elections successful.
Yadav added that the EC did not have enough time to implement its voter education programmeeffectively.
He added that the EC had limited time to educate voters about right voting techniques.
The EC is planning to launch voter education programme from Saturday, giving only 15 days to voter education trainers to reach out to voters of 32 districts, where the first phase of elections will be held on November 26.
In previous elections, the poll panel used to run voter education programme for more than a month.
Chief Secretary Lok Darshan Regmi said the government was committed to providing all kinds of help to make elections successful. “Holding successful election is our common goal,” said Regmi. He added that the government had been monitoring the work carried out by civil servants deployed on election duty.
Election commissioners Ila Sharma, Narendra Dahal, Ishwori Prasad Paudel and Sudhir Kumar Shah, EC Secretary Begendra Sharma Paudel and secretaries and joint-secretaries of several ministries were present during the interaction.
