KATHMANDU, May 19: Independent candidate Balen Shah is leading the mayoral race of Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) by a margin of over 11,000 votes against his closest rival Keshav Sthapit of the CPN-UML.
In the ongoing vote counting, Shah has received 23,584 votes so far (3PM), while Sthapit is trailing behind with 12,380 votes. Similarly, the ruling alliance candidate Sirjana Singh of Nepali Congress (NC) has received 11,499 votes so far.
There are a total of 300,242 registered voters in KMC but only a little over half of them cast their votes in the May 13 local polls.