Counting of votes for the third phase of local level elections continues in a federal unit of Province 2 even as the Election Commission announced to complete the task within five days following the September 18 vote. In two other units, results were announced on the 10th day on Wednesday.

Local elections were held in the 136 local units of eight Tarai districts last week. It had taken more than two weeks to conclude the vote count in almost all the local units in the previous two rounds of local elections held on May 14 and June 28. 

In the case of Bharatpur Metropolis, it took nearly three months for the results to come out as a court case over the tearing of ballot papers in Ward-19 got lingered, pushing back re-polling there.

Election Commission officials, however, claimed that they concluded counting in most of the local units in Province 2 within five days, leaving aside very few local units.

EC Spokesperson Navaraj Dhakal said the tendency of political parties to create trouble over minor issues caused the delay in some local units. Large-sized ballot papers, a large number of election symbols and a limited number of enumerators were blamed for the delay in the first two rounds of polls.

In Province 2, the poll authority mobilised more groups of officials to count votes in several wards for early results.

On Wednesday afternoon, vote counting continued in Rajbiraj Municipality, Saptari, while results were out in Kalaiya sub-metropolis and Birgunj metropolis earlier in the day.

In Kalaiya, vote counting was affected for two days after some votes were found to have been stamped with a “cross” instead of the swastika. In case of Rajbiraj, polling in Ward-15 was held only on September 21 due to the death of the Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal ward chairperson candidate on September 16. This delayed the whole counting process in the Saptari municipality.

Another reason for the delay in Rajbiraj was the “poor performance” of the chief election officer. 

“We had to send a separate 11-member team to start counting in Rajbiraj due to the uncalled for behaviour of the chief election officer,” said an EC official.