KHOTANG, Oct 27: Most candidates fielded by both major and fringe political parties for the upcoming provincial and parliamentary elections in Khotang district are old faces.
Most of the 10 candidates contesting for central parliament and 9 candidates fighting provincial assembly elections scheduled for November 26 are the same people who were either elected or defeated in the past two elections.
Old faces in the fray in Khotang
The district has a single constituency for the federal parliament and two constituencies for the provincial assembly.
Though the district committees of the political parties had recommended some new faces for the polls, old faces were chosen by the central committees, according to the local leaders.
Both left and democratic alliances have fielded former lawmakers for the parliamentary polls in the district. UML candidate from the left alliance Bishal Bhattarai was CPN-UML lawmaker elected from the district in 2013 while Nepali Congress (NC) candidate from the democratic alliance Saraswoti Bajimaya was also a lawmaker elected through the Proportional Representation category.
NC candidates for the provincial assembly are also former candidates for the parliamentary polls in the past two elections. NC's provincial candidate for Khotang -1 Subas Kumar Pokhrel was defeated in the 2008 Constituent Assembly (CA) election while Khotang-2 candidate Bishnu Kumar Rai had failed to make it to the CA in the 2013 election.
Maoist candidate for provincial assembly from Khotang-2, Ram Kumar Rai was defeated in the 2008 CA election. UML's provincial candidate for Khotang -1, Rajesh Rai was also an aspirant for ticket in both past elections, but he didn't get the ticket in the last hour. Rastriya Prajatantra Party's candidate Dharma Raj Pokhrel, CPN (ML) candidate Kul Prasad Sharma both are again in the election fray aspiring to recover their last defeat in 2013 CA election in the district. Khotang district has 125, 183 voters for the upcoming polls.
