KATHMANDU, JANUARY 22
Although the ruling coalition decided yesterday to hold all three tiers of elections - parliamentary, provincial, and local - together between mid-November 2022 and mid- March 2023, experts say it will not be feasible to hold elections simultaneously owing mainly to administrative and technical reasons.
Former Chief Election Commissioner Neel Kantha Uprety said the EC would have to set up 40,000 polling booths and manning those booths could be problematic. "We might not have space to increase the size of polling booths in some places as four to five ballot boxes will have to be placed," he added. Uprety said holding all three tiers of elections simultaneously would entail deployment of almost 1,000 judges as election officers and there might not be 1,000 judges available for election duty.
He added that if voters had to vote for three types of representatives - parliamentary, provincial and local - they would have to choose candidates from a long list and many could find it cumbersome, thereby affecting the voter turnout. He further said if the government wanted to hold all elections together, it would have to prepare from now for five years later when the new parliamentary, provincial and local governments complete their tenure.
Another challenge for the ruling alliance is the date for local polls. The EC has proposed holding local polls in two phases on April 27 and May 5, but the ruling alliance wants to hold polls in all three levels between mid-November 2022 and mid-March 2023.
Leaders from the main opposition CPN-UML have argued that the government must hold local polls before May 5 as per the Local Election Act, which states that local polls should be held two months before the expiry of the tenure of local governments so that the new local governments can start work from May 5 when the tenure of the existing local governments expires.
UML leaders have also said the spirit of the constitution and Local Election Act was that local governments could not remain in a vacuum even for a day.
Ruling alliance partners mainly the CPN-MC and the CPN (US) want parliamentary polls first because they fear they might not secure impressive results in the local polls, and that implies their prospects in the parliamentary elections may be dim.
CPN-MC Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal has said that local polls could be held six months after the expiry of the tenure of local representatives as Article 225 of the constitution allows this. He has said that the Local Election Act's provision was against the constitutional provision and hence void.
Ruling party leaders have also said that the tenure of local representatives could be counted from 18 September 12017 when the third phase local polls were held, which means local polls could be held anytime before mid- March 2023.
But Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Chandra Thapaliya said the argument of those who held that the tenure of local governments could be counted from the day the last phase of local polls was not valid because Section 4 of the Local Election Act clearly stipulated that the tenure of local governments would start from the date of the first phase election when polls were held in multiple phases.
In 2017, local polls were held in three phases - on May 13, June 28, and September 18, respectively.
Former CEC Uprety also said it was accepted practice to count the tenure of representatives from the first phase election. "In the past, there were some occasions when we held polls in some constituencies weeks after the scheduled election. When there is disturbance or obstruction in certain booths, and when election of a particular booth cannot be held on the scheduled date, elections in such places are held later, but the tenure of the winning candidate is counted from the first scheduled date of election and not the date he/ she was elected. The same rules apply for by-election as well," Uprety said.
A version of this article appears in the print on January 23, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
