BAJURA, APRIL 18
Gumba, a village in Ward No 3 of Himali Rural Municipality, Bajura, has the least number of voters - 60 - in the entire district. The district has 70 voting centres and 112 voting stations.
A voting centre was set up in Gumba village, which is the remotest part of the district, in the last election five years ago following a news story carried by this daily about the plight of the residents of Gumba village as they had to stay overnight on the way to exercise their voting right. The voting centre is located at Himal Bhakti Preliminary School in Gumba village. In the wake of the newspaper report, the Election Commission had directed the district election office to set up a polling centre in the village.
"The nearest voting centre for us earlier was Baudi. We had to walk for days to get there and return from Baudi if we wanted to vote," said local Tshering Dhorche Lama, 85, adding that this would be his first time casting ballot in Gumba village itself. Of the 70 voting centres in the district, 38 are considered highly sensitive, while 25 are reckoned sensitive. The remaining seven are recognised as normal.
Bajura has a total of 82,690 voters including 40,537 women voters.
According to District Election Office Chief Nawaraj Awasthi, some 13 political parties, including Nepali Congress, RPP and CPN-UML have been registered with the EC for the upcoming elections.
A version of this article appears in the print on April 19, 2022, of The Himalayan Times
