Nepal set for National Assembly polls

The election to Nepal's National Assembly will take place in all seven provinces tomorrow as preparations have been completed for the polls, the Election Commission said today.
This is for the first time that the National Assembly election is being conducted in accordance with the new Constitution promulgated in 2015.
All preparations for the election have been completed and voting will take place from 10 am to 3 pm tomorrow, an EC official said.
The Constitution has stipulated for a bicameral federal legislature comprising the House of Representatives and the National Assembly.
The election for the House of Representatives was held in two phases on November 26 and December 7. There are a total of 275 seats in the House of Representatives whereas the National Assembly (the Upper House) has 59 members. Of them, 56 members are elected by the electoral college with eight members from each province, including at least three women, one Dalit and one person from the disabled or minority communities.

The president will nominate three members, including at least one woman to the National Assembly, at the recommendation of the council of ministers.

The electoral college is made up of 2,056 voters, including 1,506 mayors and deputy mayors of municipalities, and chairpersons and vice-chairpersons of the rural municipalities.
The rest of the electorate are the 550 members of the Provincial Assemblies of all the seven provinces.
A five-member team from the Bureau of Statistics comprising three experts and two administrative assistants has been deputed for counting the votes under the single- transferable electoral system, said EC spokesperson Navaraj Dhakal.
The EC plans to make public the entire poll results by tomorrow evening if possible and by Thursday at the most.

According to the EC, out of 56 members to be elected to the National Assembly (NA), 24 candidates have already been elected.
Now there are 52 candidates in the race for 32 seats, the EC said.
The Left Alliance of the CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre secured 174 seats in the 275-member Parliament in the country's recently-concluded historic provincial and parliamentary polls that many hope will bring much-needed political stability to the Himalayan nation.