KATHMANDU: A National Assembly (NA) by-election is taking place in Lumbini Pradesh today.
The NA by-election is being held in the quota that remained vacant after CPN (Maoist Center) took action against NA member Chandra Bahadur Khadka for defecting to CPN-UML.
Karmachari Milan Kendra of Ghorahi Sub-metropolitan City, Dang has been designated as the polling center for the by-elections.
Three polling booths ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ have been arranged for the elections. The booth ‘A’ has been allocated for provincial assembly members, ‘B’ for chiefs and deputy chiefs of the local units while ‘C’ has designated for COVID-19 infected local representatives, said the Election Commission (EC).
Ruling UML has fielded Chandra Bahadur Khadka in the elections while Drig Narayan Pandey has been fielded by the opposition parties.
Pandey has jointly been fielded by Nepali Congress (NC), CPN (Maoist Center), Janata Samajwadi Party and Rastriy Janamorcha (RJM).
There are a total of 300 voters including 83 provincial assembly members and 217 chiefs and deputy chiefs of local units.
Even though there were only 79 members in the final voters’ list, the list reached 83 after the Supreme Court (SC) allowed four JSP lawmakers to cast votes.
The posts of four provincial lawmakers had been scrapped after Yadav-Bhattarai faction of the JSP took action against them alleging them of carrying out activities against the party decision.
Provincial Assembly members Santosh Kumar Pandey, Bijaya Bahadur Yadav, Suman Sharma Rayamajhi and Kalpana Pandey were allowed to cast votes after the SC issued a stay order on the decision to relieve them of their posts.
The election will begin at 9 am to 3 pm today. The election results will be out virtually today itself, informed Assistant Election Officer Nim Raj Bhattarai.
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