KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 1
The Election Commission has proposed that the government should hold local polls in a single phase on May 18. The EC gave this advice to Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba today when he consulted office bearers of the poll panel. It told him that holding local polls before May 19 was the EC's constitutional and legal duty.
According to a press release issued by the EC, the poll panel told the PM that it needed at least 120 days to prepare for local polls. It added that it had already begun local polls related activities. Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Thapaliya told THT that the PM assured them that local polls would be held in a single phase on May 18 as per their suggestions.
According to the EC, the PM told EC office bearers to prepare for local polls and hold polls in a free, fair, and impartial manner. Thapaliya told the PM that local polls should be held before the expiry of the local governments' term as there was no provision in the prevailing laws for extending the tenure of local governments.
Thapaliya told the PM that the EC favoured single-phase local polls as it would not only save cost, but would also help the poll panel carry out election-related activities, including voter education programme, more effectively.
The EC said the tenure of all local governments would end on May 19.
On the occasion, Minister of Home Affairs Bal Krishna Khand, and Minister of Communications and Information Technology Gyanendra Bahadur Karki were also present. The EC had initially suggested that the government should hold polls in single phase on April 19 or in two phases on April 27 and May 5. The government announced the election date after a tug of war between the ruling alliance and the main opposition CPN-UML.
The ruling alliance leaders, particularly those from the CPN-Maoist Centre and the CPN (Unified Socialist), had said that the local polls could be delayed by six months and that parliamentary, provincial, and local polls could be held between mid-November 2022 and mid-March 2023. But the ruling alliance backed off after civil society members and the Shekhar Koirala faction of the Nepali Congress opposed the idea of delaying local polls.
A version of this article appears in the print on February 2, 2022, of The Himalayan Times
