As per the constitutional deadline, the incumbent Parliament’s term will expire on January 21, 2018, and the country must hold three elections—local, provincial and federal—in the next 16 months.

But none of the election related bills have entered Parliament yet, stoking concerns whether the elections would be held within the set timeframe.

The first in the line is local level elections.

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has already said that his government is committed to holding local elections by March-April. According to the Election Commission (EC), it will need at least five new Acts for holding these elections and 120 days before the polls.

The EC said that it has already sent five essential five bills—Local Election Procedural Act, Political Parties related Act, Election Commission Act, Election (Offence and Punishment Act) and Act on Voter List—to the government for necessary paper works so that they could be tabled in Parliament.

“These five laws must be in place to hold the local elections,” said Surya Sharma, spokesperson for the EC.

For holding all three polls as well as election of the National Assembly and president and vice-president, nine new Acts must be in place, according to the EC.

“Bills related to election laws are yet to enter Parliament,” said Bharat Raj Gautam, spokesperson for the Parliament Secretariat. “The law minister has said that the government is working on election related laws and that it will soon register them in Parliament.”

According to Gautam, the government has informed the Parliament Secretariat that the bills are going through the bureaucratic procedures.

But for the government to hold local elections, political parties must iron out differences over the number of local units. The Local Level Restructuring Commission has proposed 565 local units (village and municipal councils) across the country. The major parties have different takes on the LLRC proposal.

While the CPN-UML, the party in opposition, is ready to accept the recommendation of the commission, the Nepali Congress (NC) has called for increasing the number of local units at least to 1,000. The CPN (Maoist Centre) has not taken any significant stance on the issue.