An election is a winner-take-all game. So, candidates in general are prepared to accept the results sportingly. But when someone loses by a thin margin, the defeat becomes a bit painful.
An election is a winner-take-all game. So, candidates in general are prepared to accept the results sportingly. But when someone loses by a thin margin, the defeat becomes a bit painful. Some close defeats were seen during the recently held House of Representatives (HoR) elections, counting of first-past-the-post votes for which was completed on Wednesday.
Though the left alliance of the CPN-UML and the CPN (Maoist Centre) has completed a clean sweep, for some of its candidates, results came as a shocker. The low margin by which they lost was just an insult to the injury.
UML’s Bamdev Gautam is one leader who was so close yet so far. He lost to Sanjay Kumar Gautam of the NC in Bardiya-1 by 753 votes. UML’s Bhagawati Chaudhary in Sunsari-3 lost to NC’s Bijay Kumar Gachhadar on Wednesday by 321 votes despite maintaining a lead since the start of the vote count until Tuesday evening.
In Kathmandu-1, Bibeksheel Sajha’s Rabindra Mishra failed to make it to the House of Representatives as he lost to NC’s Prakash Man Singh by 818 votes. Mishra’s loss cost Bibeksheel Sajha dearly, as it dashed the hopes of the new entrant into Nepali politics of winning a seat.
The Post has compiled a list of candidates who tasted defeats by a whisker, and most of them are from the Nepali Congress, which has faced the biggest electoral debacle ever with only 36 seats in its kitty against the left alliance’s 116.
NC’s downfall started from Humla where its candidate Mangal Bahadur Shahi tasted defeat at the hands of Chhakka Bahadur Lama, an independent candidate, by 47 votes. This was the lowest margin by which a candidate won a seat in HoR under the FPTP category.
Prithvi Man Shrestha is a political reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering the governance-related issues including corruption and irregularities in the government machinery. Before joining The Kathmandu Post in 2009, he worked at nepalnews.com and Rising Nepal primarily covering the issues of political and economic affairs for three years.
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