"The Election Commission (EC) and the EU today (Sunday) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to deploy 100 EU election observers during the forthcoming CA polls," said Election Commissioner Ram Bhakta PB Thakur, who also heads the election observation committee at the EC. [break]
EC Secretary Narendra Dahal and EU Ambassador Alexander Spachis signed the MoU at the commission´s head office in the capital.
Asked about polling locations where the EU observers would be deployed, Joint Secretary at the EC Maheshwar Neupane said, "The EU will take decision regarding the issue in coordination with the constitutional body later."
However, the EU will not mobilize its election observers to sensitive polling locations due to security concerns, an EC official told Republica on condition of anonymity.
According to the MoU, the EU observer mission can carry out observation of the CA elections in the line with the EC policy, work procedures and code of conduct related to election observation.
The commission had officially invited the EU for carrying out poll observation. The EC has also invited the chief election commissioners of SAARC member countries, and Australia, Thailand and South Korea for visit during the CA election.
Altogether 54 national and international election observer organizations have filed applications at the EC for carrying out the CA election observations.
According to EC officials, two international organizations, the Carter Center and Thailand-based Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) have said they will deploy 85 and 54 election observers respectively.
Similarly, 52 national election observer organizations have proposed to field over 74,000 observers during the next CA polls.
The EC has yet to decide how many election observer organizations will be allowed to carry out the observation work.
As per the newly added provision, each election observer organization must mobilize at least 100 election observers to 100 polling locations representing five development regions in the Hill, Mountain and Tarai areas.
During the 2008 CA elections held in 2008, altogether 148 national observer groups had deployed 60,000 observers while 30 international organizations had fielded 890 election observers.
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