The vote count of the run-off poll for the NC presidential post was delayed by nearly two hours when canvassers found more ballots than that were cast, leading to a dispute among the representatives of the two factions, one led by Sher Bahadur Deuba and the other by Ram Chandra Poudel.

It was later discovered that the discrepancy was caused because some sample ballots, which are used to teach right way of voting, had been slipped into the ballot boxes. Although 3,120 votes were cast, the canvassers had found 3,135 votes. The 15 extra voting slips were in fact sample ballots. The Election Committee decided to discard them and begin the counting.

 “That was a voting fraud, so we agreed not to count them,” said Gopal Krishna Ghimire, member of the committee.