INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
KATHMANDU, MARCH 11The Election Commission held a meeting with parties and informed them about its decision to put a
Rs 7.5-lakh ceiling on poll expenditure for a candidate vying for the post of mayor or deputy mayor of a metropolitan city
Local polls will be held in a single phase on May 13.
Election Commission calls for registration of political parties
Local polls to be held on May 13
The poll panel also put a Rs 5.5- lakh expenditure ceiling for those vying for posts of mayor and
deputy mayor of sub-metropolitan cities.
Those contesting the posts of chiefs and deputy chiefs of municipalities and rural
municipalities should limit their poll expenditure at Rs 450,000 and Rs 350,000, respectively, said the EC.Representative of the Democratic
Socialist Party-Nepal Keshav Jha said he proposed that the EC should put a Rs 50-million cap on those contesting mayoral posts in
metropolitan cities keeping in mind the ground reality."Everybody knows that polls are expensive.Unless laws and policies are realistic,
parties and candidates will conceal their actual expenditure,"Jha said
He said the EC tried to assure representatives that it would act against candidates if they submitted fake reports
"But how can we be sure about the EC action? It has not acted against one candidate who has not submitted actual poll expenditure details,"
He said parties' representatives agreed that the electoral system was faulty."To keep poll expenses in check, the country needs to go for
fully proportional electoral system," he said.Asked if the EC would revise its decision on poll expenditure caps, EC Spokesperson Shaligram
Sharma Paudel said he did not know if the EC would revise its decision, but the decision would remain valid unless the EC changed it.Paudel
said voters who would reach franchise age - 18 - on May 12, would be eligible to vote in local elections
This cut-of-date is expected to enable 200,000 additional voters to cast their votes.The EC told parties' representatives that it could
grant party-wise election symbol to only six national parties, but fringe parties opposed the EC proposal
Some new parties said if they were deprived of an election symbol for their candidates, that would be unfair.They also opposed vote
EC told them that as per laws, only parties that met the vote threshold could be recognised as national parties and all their candidates
could get one election symbol.EC Spokesperson Shaligram Sharma Paudel said that parties' representatives urged the EC to form a cyber bureau
to monitor and prevent attempts by some to use social networking sites to indulge in character assassination.Advocate Baburam Dahal, who
represented the CPN-UML, said UML leaders who split the mother party to from CPN (Unified Socialist) cannot get recognition of a separate
party as the ordinance that facilitated the split of the party had already been rescinded by the president.He also opposed the EC's decision
to use green ballot papers for local elections.He said in the last local, provincial, and parliamentary elections, the poll panel had used
blue, red, green, and black ballot papers.Key figures• 79 parties contesting local polls• 17,834,765 voters to exercise their right to
franchise• 9,048,213 men to cast votes• 717,067: The number of voters in Morang, the highest in any district• 640,058: The number of
voters in KathmanduA version of this article appears in the print on March 12, 2022, of The Himalayan Times
This article first appeared/also appeared in https://thehimalayantimes.com