Nepali Congress counts votes at 23 locations, results expected by Wednesday

KATHMANDU: Vote counting for the remaining posts in the Nepali Congress’ 15th General Convention is underway at 23 locations simultaneously at the party’s central office in Sanepa to expedite the process.

After completing the count for the party president and key office-bearers, the Central Election Committee has stepped up counting for joint general secretaries and central committee members under various inclusive categories.

Raju Katuwal, member-secretary of the Central Election Committee, said separate teams had been assigned to different posts and categories to manage the large number of ballots and candidates efficiently.

Counting for the open-category joint general secretary, women joint general secretary and open-category women central committee member posts is underway at five locations. The largest number of teams, nine, has been deployed to count votes for the Nepali public relations committees abroad.

Similarly, counting for the Indigenous Nationalities joint general secretary and open-category and women central committee member posts under the Indigenous Nationalities category is taking place at three locations.

Four locations are being used to count votes for open-category, women and youth central committee member posts for Sudurpashchim Province, including the youth category for candidates under 35.

Counting for the joint general secretary and open-category and women central committee member posts under the backward region category is underway at two locations.

The counting is proceeding peacefully under tight security in the presence of candidates and their authorised representatives.

Katuwal said the committee was working to announce the final results for all posts by Wednesday.

Although the process may appear slower because the number of voters has more than doubled compared with the previous convention, reaching around 7,000, he said the results would be announced sooner than in the past.

Recalling that it took 12 days to announce the results of the 14th General Convention, which had around 3,000 voters, Katuwal said the process would not take as long this time.