Deuba-led coalition on its way to winning elections in Nepal
Kathmandu: Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s Nepali Congress (NC)-led ruling coalition was on Thursday on its way to winning Nepal’s parliamentary elections and has bagged 40 seats out of 65 declared so far.
Out of the 275 Members of Parliament, 165 will be elected through direct voting, while the remaining 110 will be elected through a proportional electoral system.
Till now, the Nepali Congress has won 25 seats and is leading in 31 more.
The CPN-Maoist Centre has bagged 7 seats, CPN-Unified Socialist 6 and Rashtriya Janamorcha and Lokatantrik Samajwadi Party one each. They all are part of the ruling coalition.
The Maoist Centre and CPN-Unified Socialist have been leading in 10 and 5 seats respectively.
The main Opposition CPN-UML led by former premier K P Sharma Oli has won 15 seats and is leading in 29 others.
The CPN-UML partners – the Rashtriya Prajatantra Party and Janata Samajwadi Party – have won two and one seats respectively.
The newly-formed Rashtriya Swotantra Party has won five seats and is leading in four seats.
Rashtriya Prajatantra Party has won two seats and is leading in three seats.
Nagarik Unmukti Party, Janmat Party, Loktantrik Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Janamorcha and independent candidates have secured one seat each.
If trends continue, the NC-led five-party alliance will be in a position to form a coalition government.
However, the CPN-UML has secured the highest number of votes under the proportionate voting system, which gives it an advantage.
Under the proportionate system, the CPN-UML has so far received 3,65,505 votes whereas the NC and Maoist Centre received 3,37,328 and 1,61,069 votes respectively.
In Nepal’s capital city Kathmandu, the CPN-UML could bag just one seat, down from the six it had bagged in 2017.
Out of the 10 seats in the district, the ruling Nepali Congress (NC) has secured five and Rashtriya Swotantra Party (RSP) bagged four.
Elections to the House of Representatives (HoR) and seven provincial assemblies were held on Sunday. The counting of votes started on Monday.
Deuba secured 25,534 votes against his nearest rival Sagar Dhakal, 31, an independent candidate who received 1,302 votes. Deuba has never lost any parliamentary election in the five decades of his political career.
The 77-year-old Nepali Congress president Deuba is currently holding the post of Prime Minister for the fifth term.
Dhakal is a young engineer, who had a verbal squabble with Deuba during a public debate at a BBC’s Sajha Sawal programme five years ago, after which he decided to challenge Deuba saying that now youths should get a chance in politics and senior people like Deuba should retire.
The ruling Nepali Congress has so far bagged 11 seats in the House of Representatives (HoR) while it is leading in 46 other constituencies. The CPN-UML led by former prime minister K P Oli has so far bagged three seats and is leading in 42 constituencies.
The newly formed Rashtriya Swotantra Party has won three seats in the Kathmandu district.
Rashtriya Prajatantra Party, CPN-Unified Socialist and Nagarik Unmukti Party have bagged one seat each. So far, 20 seats of HoR have been declared.
Out of 275 Members of Parliament, 165 will be elected through direct voting, while the remaining 110 will be elected through a proportional electoral system.
Similarly, out of a total of 550 members of the seven provincial assemblies, 330 will be elected directly and 220 will be elected through the proportional method
