Kathmandu, October 30

Advocate Sunil Kumar Patel today filed a writ petition at the Supreme Court against the Election Commission’s decision to use single sheet of ballot papers for both provincial and parliamentary proportional representation elections.

The EC has started printing separate ballot papers for provincial and parliamentary first-past-the-post elections. It has already printed all the 17.4 million PR ballot papers.

In the writ petition, Patel said if the EC used single sheet of ballot papers for provincial and parliamentary PR elections, then that could confuse voters and in that case voter’s constitutional rights would be violated. Patel said uneducated voters, especially 43 per cent uneducated women population would be hit hard by the EC’s decision.

Patel said the poll panel should not hold polls that violate the constitutional rights of voters on the pretext of time crunch. “Voters may or may not cast votes for candidates of the same party in the PR election. EC should give clear alternative to voters,” reads the writ petition. He said separate ballot papers were used for first-past-the-post elections and PR elections in the both Constituent Assembly elections, and voters had the right to choose separate candidates and parties.

“It will be the weakness of the democracy if voters’ right to vote was undermined on the pretext that PR ballot papers have already been printed,” reads the writ petition.

Patel has demanded his case be given priority in the hearing. The petitioner has named the EC and the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers defendants. The first hearing of the case has been scheduled for tomorrow.

The SC had refused to issue interim order when Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal leader Sarvendranath Shukla had filed a writ petition against the EC demanding separate ballot papers for the upcoming elections.