Review Nepal
Chitwan, Nepal: Following the Supreme Court (SC) order, Chief Returning Officer in Chitwan has begun internal consolations to fix the fresh election in Ward Number 19 of Bharatpur Metropolitan City.
Upholding the Election Commission’s decision to conduct re-polling in Ward 19 of Bharatpur Metropolitan City, a division bench of Justices Om Prakash Mishra and Purushottam Bhandari had order for fresh elections.
Taking into reference to the Local Level Election Act- 2017, the EC had on June 2 ordered for re-polling.
The differences were also surfaced among the political parties as two CPN-Maoist Center’s representatives had allegedly tore 90 ballot papers on May 29. Following the incident, the vote counting was halted.
Though the CPN Maoist Center’s representatives had tore the ballot papers, the EC had no alternative to make the decision as clause 50 (2, 3, 4 and 5) of has clearly states in favor of re-polling.
In such incidents, the legal provision has allowed the Chief Returning Officer concerned to declare the place, date and time for a re-poll but not resume the vote counting.
The SC has said that the EC's decision of re-poll was in line with the existing election related laws.
The CPN-UML ward member candidate for Bharatpur-19 Gunjaman BK and advocate Tulsiram Pandey had moved to the SC against the EC decision demanding re-election.
As a single bench of Justice Cholendra Shumsher JB Rana had issued an interim order to the EC on June 5 not to implement its June 2 decision to hold re-polling in Bharatpur Metropolis-19, the UML was optimistic that the SC would make a verdict in favor of their demand of recounting.
