It will reduce election expenditure, says CEC Thapaliya
KATHMANDU, AUGUST 14
Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya said the Election Commission was mulling over giving only 15 days for election campaigning ahead of the parliamentary and provincial assembly elections scheduled for November 20.
Speaking at an interaction with editors and journalists here today, Thapaliya said although candidacies would be filed 39 days ahead of the election day, the EC was preparing to limit the poll campaign to 15 days to help candidates reduce poll expenditure.
Thapaliya's remarks came when journalists suggested that limiting the period of poll campaign was the best option to make polls less expensive.
He said candidates would have to file their nominations 39 days before the poll date, as printing ballots took a long time.
Thapaliya said the EC had the jurisdiction to limit the campaign period even though candidates would file nomination papers 39 days before elections.
The EC had given 39 days to candidates for campaigning in local elections compared to 30 days in the 2017 elections.
He said the poll panel was also thinking of mandating candidates to file affidavits stating their estimated poll expenditure and their plan to manage funds for poll campaign.
Thapaliya said 120,000 candidates who contested the last local elections had not yet submitted their poll expenditure and the EC would bar them from contesting upcoming polls. "We are not in a position to know how much these candidates spent during local polls because they have not submitted poll expenditure details," he added.
He said the EC expected that out of around 18,200,000 voters, 13,000,000 were likely to cast their votes in the upcoming parliamentary and provincial polls. The EC will have to print 80 million ballot papers and it may seek the help of private press to print the required number of ballot papers as six printing machines can print only 40 million ballot papers in 34 days.
Journalists suggested that the EC should not bar pre-poll and exit poll surveys, as they were in public interest. They also told the poll panel that it should not enforce poll code of conduct for media outlets as they were bound by their own codes which were enough to regulate election coverage.
A version of this article appears in the print on August 15, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
