Rautahat, September 15

Though only three days are left before the third phase of local level elections in Province 2 begins, polls officials deputed across Rautahat have been unable to start their work due to reasons related with staff management.

The officials, now at the district headquarters of Gaur, have been unable to perform their duty for want of logistics needed to conduct elections, their appointment letter and remuneration.

Voter identity card distribution, supposed to begin today, has been badly affected in the district, with poll officials failing to reach their duty stations in time. They were supposed to reach to respective polling stations yesterday and start distributing voter identity cards from today.

The district election office has started distributing poll materials, issuing appointment letter to  election staff and paying them from Gaur-based Juddha Secondary School today. Hence, many of the officials are expected to report to their respective polling stations only tomorrow, said sources. Registered voters are returning home without their voter identity cards due to the delay.The officials said they were perplexed as the district election office failed to make necessary arrangement for their mobilisation in time. Security personnel have, however, been deployed in all 434 polling stations across the district.

District Election Office, Rautahat Chief Rajan Sribastav conceded that there had been certain hurdles in staff management due to the Chief Election Office’s failure to proceed with election staff’s appointment letters and their remuneration in time. He, however, claimed that all election officials would reach to their destinations by tomorrow.

The Election Commission’s district monitoring team chief Birendra Yadav acknowledged that there had been some lapses in staff management for the poll in Rautahat. “This is the reason why I have arrived here to probe the matter. I have already reported to the EC in this regard,” he said.

Chief District Officer of Rautahat Uddhab Bahadur Thapa said 6,000 security personnel had been deployed across the district.