Vice President’s election today

By A Staff Reporter,Kathmandu, Mar. 17: The country on Friday will elect its third Vice President for the fourth tenure since Nepal became a republic in 2008. 

The election is scheduled from 10 am to 3 pm at the Lhotse Hall in the Parliament Building of New Baneshwor. 

The election is being held a day before the termination of Vice President Nanda Bahadur Pun’s tenure. The five-year term of the incumbent Vice President will end on March 18. Vice President Pun was re-elected to the post on March 18, 2018. 

The Election Commission (EC) has completed all the preparations for the election of the Vice President, EC’s Spokesperson Shaligram Sharma Poudel said. 

A total of four candidates, three from the ruling coalition and one from main opposition CPN-UML, are in the fray.  

Vice-chair of UML Astalaxmi Shakya, Ram Sahaya Prasad Yadav and Pramila Yadav from the Janata Samajwadi Party and Mamata Jha of the Janamat Party have filed their candidacies for the post.

JSP-N candidate Ram Sahaya Yadav has backing of four parties of the ruling alliance, CPN (Maoist Centre), Nepali Congress, CPN (Unified Socialist) and JSP-N, as per the agreement reached earlier on February 25. 

The JSP-N registered the candidacy of Ram Sahaya Yadav and Pramila Yadav following the debate whether a male can be elected in the Vice Presidential post when a male was already elected as the President.

Though two separate complaints were lodged against the JSP-N’s candidate Ram Sahaya Yadav on behalf of CPN-UML and Janamat Party candidate, the EC refused to cancel his candidacy.

Assistant election officer Amrita Kumari Sharma said two voting centres have been set up for the voting, one for the members of the federal parliament and the other for the members of the seven provincial assemblies. 

According to her, seven employees have been deployed at each voting centre, while the security personnel have been deployed as per the requirement. 

Sharma further added that voters would not be allowed to carry devices to the voting centres. 

The office plans to count the votes as soon as the voting is over and announce the result on Friday itself, said Sharma.  

The election is being held based on a weighted voting system. As per the current population of the country, the weightage of each member of the federal parliament is 79 and that of a provincial assembly member is 48.

Out of 884 members, only 881 members, including 332 members of the federal parliament and 550 of seven provincial assemblies, are enlisted in the final voters’ list published by the EC.

There are 334 seats in the federal parliament, including 275 members of the House of Representatives (HoR) and 59 of the National Assembly. Of them, only 332 have been listed in the voters’ list as one HoR seat is vacant while one lawmaker has been suspended. 

Member of Janata Samajwadi Party, Shahnaz Rahman, died after the EC published the final list. Similarly, two lawmakers, Chandra Bhandari of NC and Barsha Man Pun of CPN (MC) are undergoing treatment abroad.