Tanahun/Kavre, April 13:

The Maoists breached another the Nepali Congress bastion by bagging one of the three seats of Tanahun district that was thought to be the NC’s always. The UML netted one seat while the NC managed to salvage only one.

Maoist candidate Suresh Ale Magar bagged 17, 744 votes from Tanahun 1. NC’s Ram Chandra Poudel defeated his nearest rival CPN-Maoist candidate Dambar Bahadur BK, who secured 11,050 voted, in Constituency No 2 by bagging 18,970 votes.

UML’s Kiran Gurung defeated his nearest rival NC candidate Tara Raj Rana, who secured 13,740 votes, in Constituency No 3 with 14,786 votes.

In the last election, NC leader Govind Raj Joshi had won Constituency No 1 of Tanahun, defeating UML’s Ek Bahadur Ranamagar by 2,217 votes. This time, NC’s Poudel defeated his UML rival Shankar Narayan Shrestha by a margin of 14,121 votes in Constituency No 2.

UML’s Tuk Raj Sigdel won from Constituency No 3 by defeating nearest rival NC’s Bushnu Bir Ale.

Some 2,407 of the 44,923 votes polled in Constituency No 1 with an electorate of 87,286 were declared void while 2,822 of the 47,986 votes polled in Constituency No 2 with an electorate of 93,380 were declared invalid and 2,032 of the 44,841 votes polled in Constituency No 3 were declared void.

CPN-Maoist candidate Suryaman Dong (Laldhwoj) bagged seat 1 of Kavre district with 27,471 votes in his kitty. His nearest rival Sangramjit Lama of CPN-UML secured 8,407 votes, while Nepali Congress candidate Madhu Prasad Acharya secured 7,212 votes. Kavre’s constituency 1 has an electorate of 82,310. Some 51,800 were polled in the seat of which 41,734 votes were declared valid. Fifteen candidates including an independent were in the fray here.