The Election Commission is mulling over tightening the criteria for local observers of the provincial and federal parliamentary elections scheduled for November 26 and December 7.

EC officials said options were being weighed after the election authority found that some observers had failed to perform their duties independently.

On July 10, the EC revoked the licence of the Election Observation Forum after the observers associated with it were found to have worked as representatives of a political party during the counting of votes.

The Forum’s representatives—Min Bahadur Thapa, Buddhi Bahadur Rokaya and Rammani Poudel—had served the interests of a political party in Banganga Municipality, Kapilvastu.

The EC has disqualified them for election observation in future and also annulled the identity cards issued to all the observers mobilised by the Forum.

“We plan to prioritise organisations having prior experience in election observation and their professionalism and impartiality for the upcoming two major polls,” said Election Commissioner Sudhir Shah, adding that the criteria were yet to be finalised. EC officials had issued observation licences even to new organisations for the first and second phases of local level elections held on May 14 and June 28.

As many as 6,733 local observers from 48 organisations were mobilised during the second phase of elections. In the first round, 49 institutions were involved in the process.

Gopal Krishna Siwakoti, general secretary of the Nepal Election Observation Committee, said the EC cannot find observers having no political ideology. “Past political affinity of any individual alone should not be the basis for barring them from election observation but whether such persons have professional integrity should be taken into account,” he said.