Bijay Damase   

November 21:   The voter turnout during Sunday’s general election was much less than expected. According to the preliminary report of the Election Commission (EC), the voter turnout remained less than 61 per cent.

Prior to this, the nationwide voter turnout in the elections held in 2017 stood at 67.63 percent while the voter turnout in local elections held earlier this year was 66.86 percent.

Analysts believe that the low voter turnout is the result of lack of accountability of the people’s representatives elected in the past. The low voter turnout also hints at the people’s contempt towards political party leaders and their working style.

Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya admitted during a press conference on Sunday evening that the voter turnout was less than expected. He said that the voting was not encouraging on Sunday morning but there was some improvement towards the afternoon.

“The election has been postponed in some places,” said CEC Thapaliya.

He added that the vote counting would begin as soon as the ballot boxes are collected from the polling stations and brought to the vote counting centres.

The EC maintained that the elections were largely peaceful, with some exceptions of sporadic incidents.    

According to the EC, election-related violence was reported in over a dozen district. Police had to resort to firing blank shots in the air to bring the situation under control in over 24 polling centres of 11 districts. Voting was suspended in 64 places but it resumed in all but six of those areas. One person was killed in police firing in Triveni Municipality of Bajura district as police opened fire to disperse the agitating crowd.

There are a total of eligible 17,988,570 voters in Nepal registered at the Election Commission. According to the EC, information on voter turnout is being registered in the EC’s entry system.    

The Election Commission had set up 22,227 voting centres under 10,892 polling stations for the election to the House of Representatives (HoR) and provincial assemblies on November 20.