Voting completed with sporadic incidents

KATHMANDU: Voting for the local level election 2079 has been completed peacefully, with sporadic incidents of disturbances. As a result, the Nepal Police has concluded that the election was held peacefully.

Nepal Police Spokesperson Senior Superintendent of Police Bishnukumar KC said that the election was held peacefully despite sporadic incidents in different districts.

According to him, 110 incidents have taken place in more than 30 districts as per the details received at the Police Headquarters as of 5:00 pm on Friday.

As per the details received, re-polling was held in 40 polling stations which were blocked due to disputes.

He said that polling has been postponed in some polling stations including Kavre, Saptari and Sarlahi. In some districts, even the rains affected the polling.

KC said that warning shots had to be fired in some polling stations of 11 districts to bring the situation under control. Likewise, tear gas was fired at one polling station in Humla.

The EC said that necessary arrangements have been made for the safe transportation of ballot boxes as well as to initiate vote counting immediately by collecting all ballot boxes.

The local-level election was held in a single phase for the first time. The local-level election held for the first time in 2074 BS after promulgation of the Constitution of Nepal was held in three-phase.

Voting began from 7:00 am from 21,955 polling stations of 10,756 voting centers across the nation.

A total of 35,221 people’s representatives in 753 local levels would be elected from the election.

Eligible voters, who completed 18 years till Thursday, and registered have got the opportunity to cast votes. Out of the total 145,011 candidates contesting in the poll, 390 have been already unanimously elected.

Similarly, of 79 political parties registered with the Election Commission for the election, 65 registered their nomination.

For the poll, a total of 439,953 people (109,088 employees, 65,865 volunteers, 5,000 supervisors and 260,000 security personnel) were deployed.

The timeframe for the poll was between 7 am and 5 pm. But, in some places, voting has continued with the voters already in a queue before 5 to cast their vote.