Nepal holds local elections after hiatus of 20 years

Nepal held local body elections on Sunday as a major step to implement its landmark constitution adopted in 2015.

The one-day elections conducted from 7:00 a.m to 5: p.m. local time in 34 districts of province 3, 4 and 6 of the Himalayan country, with 283 local municipalities voted for candidates for seven positions, according to the Election Commission.

"The elections were concluded successfully in a peaceful manner with the encouraging number of people who voted for their candidates with full of enthusiasm," Chief Election Commissioner Ayodhi Prasad Yadav told a press conference on Sunday evening adding that the voters' turnout stood at 71 percent.

Nepal held such elections after a hiatus of two decades.

"This is one of our major steps to implement the new constitution promulgated in September 2015," Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal told media after casting votes at a polling station at Chitwan District in the Central Nepal, some 160 km south of the Capital.

As many as 5 million voters took part in the landmark local body polls held for the first time in Nepal after the culmination of decade-long armed conflict that ended in 2006.

This is the first round of local body elections where some 50,000 contenders vied for the 13,556 positions in various places including Kathmandu Valley that covered nearly half of the country.

People who were eligible to vote cast their ballots at 6,642 polling stations.

The government deployed some 46,000 government staffs to the polling stations guarded by 75,000 security personnel including over 20,000 temporary police recruit during the one-day election.

Governing parties, Nepali Congress and the CPN (Maoist Centre) and the opposition Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) are main contenders in most of the places where elections were held on Sunday.

Local body elections followed by provincial and national elections should be held mandatorily by January 2018 as enshrined in the Nepali constitution.

Last time local representatives were appointed back in 1997, whose tenure expired after five years. Since then Nepal did not hold such local body elections.

According to the election commission, some 60 political parties fielded candidates whether for mayor, deputy mayor, and head of village councils.

A Kathmandu-based political analyst Gopal Khanal told Xinhua on Sunday that this election will end the political vacuum at the local bodies which were headless in the absence of elected representatives for the past two decades.

"The local body elections will give a concrete shape to the federal setup, putting an end to the long-running unitary and centralized system that existed for decades," Khanal said adding that the election will be instrumental to implement the federalism.

Federalism is one of the major characteristics of the new constitution and a key agenda raised by the Maoists during the decade-long armed conflict which took some 16,000 lives.

Nearly 40 percent of the seats would be occupied by women including at least a Dalit woman member and either a mayor or deputy mayor in the municipality and either the chief or deputy chief in the rural municipality, according to the Election Commission.

General public were seen excited for the historical polls on Sunday following many political developments and gradual economic reforms in the country.

"I was quite excited to cast votes for the first time in my life," Sebika Khatri, a 20-year-old student told Xinhua, who cast votes at a polling station in Patan City in the Kathmandu Valley.

Nepal will hold the second round of elections on June 14 in provinces number 1, 2, 5 and 7 that border India. Enditem