By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Feb.1: Election Commission (EC) has pushed forward the preparations for registration of political parties for the mid-term election of the House of Representatives going to be held in two phases on April 30 and May 10. In line with the constitutional and legal provisions, the commission is preparing to call for the registration of political parties for the upcoming election.
According to an official of the EC, notice regarding the registration of parties will be made public shortly. The parties will be given a minimum of seven to a maximum of 15 days for the registration. However, the commission is yet to set the time limit.
Likewise, Raj Kumar Shrestha, spokesperson of EC said that the commission was striving to issue public notice regarding the registration of parties for the election.
Regarding the Nepal Communist Party’s dispute on registration of the party, an EC official said, “The commission has already given decision regarding NCP’s dispute, it is up to the two factions of NCP to implement our decision. All the provisions mentioned in the party’s charter must be followed while registering the political party.”
In the case of NCP, the commission will give legitimacy to only those documents which are signed jointly by the Chairmen duo KP Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’.
Moreover, the commission is also planning to make the action plan public where 15 days to one month will be provided for the political parties and candidates to run their election campaign.
The commission has already prepared a draft of the code of conduct to be followed in the run up to the election in order to ensure a fair election process. The draft will be now presented before the political parties for consultation after which the final code of conduct will be prepared.
Financial procedure for the operation of the election of HoR has also been prepared by the EC where the commission has anticipated that around Rs. 7 billion will be spent in the entire election process.
Meanwhile, Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya directed the officials to move ahead with the preparations of the election by staying alert and aware as to avoid all kinds of mistakes and weaknesses.
Inspecting the election preparation at Bhaktapur on Sunday, Chief Commissioner Thapaliya directed the officials to update the voters’ list without any mistakes. Likewise, he said that while reviewing the voting centre, the directions given by the work procedure of the commission must be taken into consideration.
“For the upcoming election, the code of conduct has been prepared to ensure that inspection is done in all local levels and the office of election officer is established within the concerned constituency,” said Thapaliya.
In the presence of the Chief Election Commissioner, a meeting was held between Nawaraj Gelal, chief of Bhaktapur District Coordination Committee, Bhaktapur Chief District Officer Prem Prasad Bhattarai, chiefs of the security authorities, and election officials in Bhaktapur on Sunday.