KATHMANDU, Nov 15: Election Commission (EC) has extended the deadline for voter registration by five days, granting citizens until November 21 to enroll for the upcoming House of Representatives (HoR) election on March 5. The deadline was previously set for November 16.
The extension comes in response to a formal request by Prime Minister Sushila Karki, who urged the Commission to accommodate the sharp rise in citizens seeking to register. In a telephone conversation with Acting Chief Election Commissioner Ram Prasad Bhandari, the prime minister underscored the need to ensure adequate time for all eligible citizens to complete the registration process, according to the PM’s secretariat.
Over one million new voters added for March 5 polls
The appeal follows an unprecedented surge in online registrations after the government allowed online registering for the voters without having to go to the registration centre. The government allowed people to log on into EC’s website, enter national ID number and other information and complete the process digitally.
EC officials said that the online registration volumes spiked rapidly from Thursday. A total of 35,000 citizens successfully registered using their National ID on the first day of registration. However, the unexpected traffic load forced the system to crash on Friday morning.
According to technical teams from the Election Commission and the National ID and Civil Registration Department, the platform recorded more than 3.5 million registration attempts in a short span—far exceeding the system capacity. Over 600,000 requests were made at the National ID server for the integration of information with the Election Commission. Only 100,000 applicants were successful in authentication before the disruption.
Users also reported that it was difficult to select districts and faced stalled sessions, due to server overload.
The EC later claimed that the issue was resolved and the online services will progressively return to stable performance from Saturday onwards.
