KATHMANDU, JANUARY 30
The Election Commission has decided to hold the presidential election on March 9 and the election for vice-president on March 17.
President Bidhya Devi Bhandari's tenure ends on March 12 and that of Vice-president Nanda Bahadur Pun on March 17.
Bhandari and Pun were elected to the top state positions in March 2018.
The president and the vice-president are elected through an electoral college consisting of members of the federal Parliament and provincial assemblies. Weightage of votes of federal and provincial lawmakers is different. Article 70 of the constitution stipulates that the president and the vice-president must be from different genders or communities.
In accordance with the calendar of events endorsed by the EC, the poll panel will publish the voting list for presidential election on February 22. People can lodge complaints against any voter on February 22 and 23.
The EC will investigate the complaints on February 23 and 24 before publishing the final voter list on February 24.
Candidates wishing to contest the presidential election can file their nomination papers on February 25. The EC will publish the final list of candidates on February 28.
The EC has fixed March 11 as the date for filing nomination papers for the post of vice-president. The EC will publish the final list of contestants on March 12. Elec-tions will be held between 10:00am and 3:00pm on March 17. The EC has written to the government to publish the election dates in the National Gazette.
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who is the chair of the CPN-MC, is in favour of selecting a person acceptable to all political forces as the new president. He floated this proposal in the party's standing committee meeting. CPN- MC leaders close to Dahal told THT that although they had agreed to give the post of president to the UML on the day they decided to forge alliance with the UML, the political situation changed significantly when the Nepali Congress also gave the vote of confidence to Dahal. Dahal wants to maintain the spirit of national consensus witnessed during the vote of confidence.
The standing committee of the CPN-MC, which is debating the PM's idea, is yet to take a call on the issue.
Meanwhile, the CPN-UML and the NC have intensified efforts to get their own candidates elected to the two posts.
A version of this article appears in the print on January 31, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
