Valley
CEC says counting will be completed in a week
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Ayodhee Prasad Yadav said on Wednesday that vote counting would be completed within a week.Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Ayodhee Prasad Yadav said on Wednesday that vote counting would be completed within a week. The Election Commission (EC), which has been praised for successfully holding the first phase of polls, has been facing criticism for slow vote counting, largely due to the size of ballot papers and too many electoral symbols. “The Election Commission has asked all the chief election officers and election officers to increase the number of counting desks to 10-11 to complete counting process in a week,” said CEC Yadav at a programme organised to release a preliminary report of by election observers.
Given the size of the ballot papers and number of electoral symbols on them, the time taken to count votes should not be considered that slow, said Yadav.
The largest ballot paper used in Sunday’s polls was 51cm in width and 72cm in length.
“The EC had to design these ballot papers based on number of registered political parties in each districts instead of the number of actual candidates as per Local Level Election Act,” Yadav added.
The Act allows 15 days for election campaigning once the final list of candidates are published. “It is impossible to print the ballot boxes after the candidates are finalised. So we relied on assumption when we designed ballot papers and starting printing,” said Yadav.
Enumerators added in Kathmandu
KATHMANDU: In a bid to speed up vote counting in Kathmandu, an additional 83 enumerators have been deployed from Wednesday. Thirteen officials from the Election Commission and 70 from Kathmandu Metropolitan City have been added, according to EC officials. “With more enumerators, we hope to see easy and fast counting now,” said Dipendra Adhikari, Chief Election Officer. Earlier three teams comprising seven to ten enumerators were involved in counting votes for the Kathmandu Metropolitan City which has 32 wards. Out of around 280,000 voters in the metropolis, over 195,000 votes were cast on Sunday’s elections. (PR)