The Election Commission (EC) has said that it has directed the Janak Education Materials Center ( JEMC) to begin the printing works of FPTP ballot papers on Friday. [break]
The printing of ballot papers for the Proportional Representation (PR) system had begun on October 5 and so far over 3.5 million ballot papers have been printed, according to Election Commissioner Dr Ayodhi Prasad Yadav.
The colour of PR ballot paper will be light red and it will be light blue for FPTP. In the PR system, the entire country is taken as a single constituency and CA seats will be allocated to the political parties as per the ratio of votes they garner across the country.
Although 124 political parties had applied for the PR seats at the EC, only 122 parties submitted a closed name list of possible candidates. The EC has planned to publish the final name list of proposed PR candidates on October 23.
The political parties contending in the November 19 election have been distributed with the election symbols. The size of ballot paper will be 500 millimeters in length and 360 millimeters in breadth. There will be seven columns and 18 rows.
The format of the ballot paper was determined bearing in the mind the order of the Supreme Court to that end. The SC had directed the EC to follow the serial numbers of the parties they got during the registration while putting the election symbol from left to right format. Around 30 million ballot papers are necessary for both the FPTP and PR electoral systems, the EC said.
Similarly, the final name list of voters will be made public soon. As many as 6,100 candidates from different political parties are contending from 240 electoral constituencies under the FPTP system in the upcoming CA election. There will be 335 seats for proportional representation system and the remaining 26 seats of the 601 member parliament will be nominated by the Council of Ministers on consensus.
This number was just 3,900 in the first 2008 CA election. The EC has expected to complete the printing of ballot papers by November 8. According to Commission Joint Secretary Maheshwor Neupane, the Armed Police Force is assigned to transport ballot papers to the districts linked with road network whereas the Nepal Army helicopter will be used for taking the ballot papers to 14 mountain districts. The NA, APF and the Nepal Police have been deputed in and around the JEMC for security of the printing.
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