KATHMANDU, Feb 5: The Election Commission has begun arrangements to dispatch ballot boxes to polling centres starting Wednesday.
According to the EC’s Assistant Spokesperson Prakash Neupane, the process formally started on Wednesday, with all district election offices also initiating preparations the same day.
District election offices have begun managing details such as how ballot boxes will be transported to polling centres, the number required, and the schedule for dispatch. “The ballot boxes for Kathmandu and Lalitpur were stored at the Election Commission office.
From Wednesday, they have started being sent to the Kathmandu and Lalitpur district election offices,” Nyaupane said. “For other districts, the required ballot boxes had already been sent earlier to the respective district election offices.”
Ballot boxes yet to reach vote counting centers in Rukum West
Nyaupane said each polling centre is provided with two ballot boxes—one for the proportional representation system and one for the first-past-the-post system—along with two additional boxes kept in reserve. According to the Commission, Kathmandu, Jhapa, and Rupandehi require the highest number of ballot boxes, as each of these districts has between 817 and 833 polling centres.
Manang has the fewest polling centres, with only 34. The EC said it will begin deploying polling officers to all polling centres from Magh 10, before which the officers will be provided with training.
As of Wednesday, the EC has printed six million ballot papers for the first-past-the-post election. A total of 20.3 million ballot papers are required for this category. For the proportional representation system, all ballot papers have already been printed, with a total requirement of 20.8 million.
The final number of voters for the election stands at 18,903,689. In the 2079 elections to the House of Representatives and provincial assemblies, there were 17,988,570 voters—9,140,806 men, 8,847,579 women and 185 others.
Compared to 2022, the total number of voters in 2082 has increased by 915,119. This includes an increase of 522,552 male voters, 392,552 female voters and 15 voters in the ‘other’ category.
According to the Commission, for the House of Representatives election 2082, voters will cast their ballots at 23,112 polling centres across 10,967 polling stations nationwide. This is 75 more polling stations than in the 2079 election.
