The Supreme Court (SC) on Friday rescheduled the final hearing on a writ petition against Election Commission (EC)’s decision to hold re-polling in Bharatpur Metropolis-19 for Monday, citing time constraints. A division bench of Justices Mira Khadka and Anil Kumar Sinha was scheduled to hear the case, which was expected to be final, on Friday. Vote counting in Bharatpur was halted after the fracas at a counting centre on the night of May 28, in which the CPN (Maoist Centre) representatives had allegedly torn ballot papers. Counting of ballots of Ward 19 was underway when the incident happened.

The EC on June 3 decided to conduct re-election in the concerned ward. But the decision was challenged in the apex court by Advocate Tulsiram Pandey and UML ward member candidate Gunjaman BK on June 4, demanding resumption of vote counting instead of re-polling. Around 90 ballot papers were found torn. On June 27, EC officials had handed over necessary documents, including the torn ballot papers, to the apex court secretariat as per the court’s  June 20 order. CPN-UML’s Devi Gyawali was leading when the incident happened. (PR)