KATHMANDU: Inmates in prison are exercising their right to vote in the House of Representatives and State Assembly member elections on Sunday for the first time.
It has been arranged for inmates making it to the voters’ list, except those convicted of election offenses, to vote under the proportional representatives electoral system in the House of Representatives election.
Meanwhile, the relevant office has reported that all election preparations have been completed in three Kathmandu Valley prisons. 182 inmates in two Kathmandu prisons and one in Lalitpur will be allowed to cast their votes.
110 inmates from the Kathmandu prison, 20 from Jagannath Dewal, and 52 from the Lalitpur prison will vote. The Jagannath Dewal prison has over 3,400 inmates, 650 in Kathmandu, and 1,420 in Lalitpur.
Sources said election preparations had been completed in the Jagannath Dewal prison. They added voting materials had been delivered from the election officer’s office. On Sunday, voting will begin at 7 am.
From this time, the Election Commission has arranged voting for employees and security personnel, people in nursing homes, inmates and detainees in prisons, except those convicted of election offenses, and whose names are on the voters’ list but cannot reach a polling station.
To that end, 141 temporary polling stations have been established across the country.
For the first time since Nepal’s Constitution was issued in 2072, the Election Commission has implemented the system of voting by temporary voters. There are 450,000 temporary voters in the country.
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