KATHMANDU, March 8: Sher Bahadur Deuba has been elected as president of Nepali Congress in the runoff poll held on Monday.
Deuba secured 1,822 votes while his rival Ram Chandra Paudel, who is also the party’s incumbent acting president, got 1,296 votes. Twenty-two votes were invalid.
The party went for a runoff as the first round of voting yielded no clear result. The party statute states that one of the candidates must secure over 50 percent of the total vote cast in the election.
The second round voting that started at 2 pm Monday concluded at 6 pm.
Only 3,120 votes were cast in the second round whereas 3,148 votes were cast in the first round. Party leaders assumed that some of the delegates who arrived from abroad might have left the country or Kathmandu without participating in the second round voting due to their tight schedules.
Leaders from the establishment side had earlier assumed that the 324 votes secured by the third contestant would be decisive and they were hopeful of getting those votes because Sitaula was with the same panel until just ahead of the general convention.
But issuing a statement on Monday prior to the voting, Sitaula urged all party delegates to respect the sentiment of the party members as expressed through the first round of voting. Within a few hours, he issued another statement urging all the representatives to participate in the runoff vote as well. He didn’t however express his support for Paudel.
With this turn of events Deuba supporters present at Rashtriya Sabhagriha, the venue for voting and counting, became encouraged.
In the first round of voting, despite a consistent lead by former Prime Minister Deuba throughout the counting, he at the end secured only 1,564 votes, 11 votes short of the required 1,575 to get elected.
His nearest rival Paudel had secured 1,160 votes. Likewise, the other contestant Sitaula fell far behind the two candidates with just 324 votes. Altogether, 100 votes were found invalid in the first round.
As per clause 16 of the party statute, only a candidate securing over 50 percent of the total vote cast can be elected as president. However, in the runoff voting, anyone securing the higher vote can be declared president even if it’s less than 50 percent. This provision of over 50 percent vote requirement does not apply for other posts.
The party hasn’t started counting the votes cast to elect the general secretary, treasurer and 61 central working committee members.
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