Kathmandu, May 15

Residents of Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur districts, who voted yesterday in the first phase of local polls, complained that the counting of votes was very slow and they were not getting authentic information about who was leading where.

Lalitpur Metropolitan City was the first among three major local levels of the valley to begin counting. Government authorities started counting   in Lallitpur last night. Vote counting in Kathmandu and Bhaktapur district began only this afternoon.

In Kathmandu Metropolitan City, government employees deployed for vote count duty wanted to start the counting at 1:00pm but they could not do so as a document that the representatives of the various political parties had signed was misplaced.

Vote counting in Kathmandu Metropolitan City began only at around 2:00pm. “Arguments and counter arguments between big parties delayed the counting,” said Ranju Darshana, Bibeksheel Nepali Party’s mayoral candidate for KMC. She also said that lack of pace in counting was a concern for the representatives of political parties.

One of CPN-UML’s polling agents in Kathmandu    Shaligram Khadka said he was expecting vote counting in Kathmandu to finish in three days, but if the counting went on like this, it could take almost a week to declare the final results.  One temporary police deployed at the city centre of Kathmandu where the vote is being counted fainted due to exhaustion.

Raghunath KC, a resident of Lalitpur Metropolitan City went to Ekantkuna, Jawlakhel in Lalitpur three times in 24 hours,   to get updates on the poll results, but did not get any authentic information from anybody there.

“I then decided to watch television to get updates about the poll results. I realised that people can get information through televisions and electronic media better than from the counting centres,” he said.

Residents of Bhaktapur Municipality were so angry that they chanted slogans in front of the counting centre in Itachhe, Bhaktapur against ‘slow counting of votes.’

In Bhaktapur, some residents said that as counting became slow; cadres of various political parties did

not take phone calls from their supporters, apparently because they did not have information on who was leading where.

A big crowd had gathered at the counting place in Bhaktapur but they abandoned the place after sudden rainfall.

Krishna Prasad Chawal, who represented a party in the vote count in Bhaktapur, said the ballot papers were overly big and therefore, the authorities involved in counting could not count votes fast.

“The Election Commission should have foreseen the difficulties that we faced today. The EC should have managed multiple places to count votes,” he added. He said there were 16 candidates in Bhaktapur but there were 42 rows which was also a factor that caused slow counting in Bhaktapur district. Bhaktapur resident Prem Kharbhuja said the voters were not getting any information about results of ward elections.

In Bhaktapur, only 400 votes had been counted by 4:00pm today.

Election Commission Spokesperson Surya Prasad Sharma told THT that counting was slow mainly because the government authorities had to count seven votes in one ballot paper, which was very different from the Constituent Assembly elections when they just had to count one vote. He also said that since local levels had just been created, there was not enough space to count votes at multiple places.