KATHMANDU, Oct 11: The Election Commission (EC) on Thursday allocated election symbols to all candidates under the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system for the Constituent Assembly (CA) poll scheduled for November 19.
According to Election Commissioner Ila Sharma, candidates from political parties got the same election symbols the commission has allocated to their respective parties while independent candidates were asked to choose symbols from the election symbol bank. [break]
The commission published the lists of election symbols allocated to FPTP candidates at the offices of all 240 returning officers across the country.
Allocation of election symbols is the second last program in the calendar of events for the FPTP electoral system.
According to the EC, 205 candidates under the FPTP electoral system have withdrawn their candidacies. With the withdrawal of the 205, the total number of FPTP candidates now stands at 6,138. This figure is not final as some verifications still remain, according to EC Spokesman Bir Bahadur Rai.
Altogether 6,343 FPTP candidates, excluding 11 disqualified, had filed their candidacies last Thursday for the upcoming CA polls. Of the 6,343 candidates, 672 were women and one a third gender.
Similarly, out of the 1,219 independent candidates, 69 are women.
Altogether 2,782 candidates had filed candidacies in the central development region, 1,527 in the eastern development region, 1,057 in the western development region, 589 in the mid-western and 388 candidates in the far-western development region.
Four political parties -- Sanghiya Bikaswadi Party, Nepal Ganatantrik Ekata Party, Naya Sanghiyata Janadharana Party and Nepal Janahit Party-- did not file any candidacies under FPTP.
According to EC officials, the state-owned Janak Education Materials Centre (JEMC), which is entrusted with printing ballot papers, will begin printing the ballots for the FPTP electoral system from Friday evening.
JEMC will print 15 million ballot papers for FPTP. The state-owned JEMC is publishing 15 million ballot papers for the proportional representation electoral system also.
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