KATHMANDU: The Election Commission on Monday has said that only 50 per cent of the vote counting has been over in the Kathmandu Metropolitan City.

The first phase of local level election was held across various 34 districts in province no 3, 4 and 6, including the Kathmandu Valley on May 14.

According to Chief Election Officer Dipendra Adhikar, at least 96,441 votes have been counted so far in the KMC. Although 279,316 voters were registered with the KMC, only 73 per cent of them had cast their ballot.

The vote counting is being carried out in various 13 places inside the Rastriya Sabha Griha in Kathmandu.

Adhikari further said that vote counting is being done round the clock by different groups in shift, there has been delay due to the large size of ballot paper.

The 51 cm long and 73 cm wide ballot paper has been consuming significant amount of time for counting as the earlier ones used to be relatively smaller and handy, according to the ECN.

Surprising as it may sound, it takes around three minutes on an average to count a single vote, said Chief Election Officer Adhikari.

It is estimated that whole vote counting may take another five days. Of the total 32 wards in KMC, vote counting of 12 wards has been completed.