Saturday, April 26, 2008

Maoists bag 100 PR seats, says EC

Razen Manandhar
Kathmandu, April 25:

The CPN-Maoist bagged the most Constituent Assembly seats under the Proportional Representation (PR) system too by winning 100 seats out of the total 335 seats allocated for the PR system.

The Maoists had polled 3,144,204 (29.85 per cent) votes out of the 10,739,078 votes cast under the PR system.

The Maoists have already secured 120 seats under the first-past-the-post system. With the PR results, Maoists will have 220 seats (36.6 per cent) in the 601-member assembly.

Fifty-four political parties out of the 74 registered in the EC had taken part in the election under the PR system. Of them, only 25 parties have secured at least one seat in the CA through this system.

The NC, which stood second in direct polls by winning 37 seats, bagged 73 seats under the PR system. It polled 2,269,883 votes (21.79 per cent). The CPN-UML got 70 seats with 2,183,370 votes (20.90 per cent). The MJF bagged 22 seats under PR system. MJF got 6.57 per cent votes of the total votes cast under PR system. Another Tarai-based party, TMDP, got 11 seats with 3,338,930 votes under the PR system.

Both the CPN-ML and the RPP stand sixth in the hierarchy with eight seats each. They have won no seat under direct polls. The RPP polled 263,431 votes and the CPN-ML polled 243,545 votes. The Sadbhawana Party and the CPN-United have secured five seats each under the PR system with 167,517 votes and 154,968 votes, respectively.

The RJP and People’s Front Nepal have secured three seats each and the NWPP, Rastriya Janamukti Party, CPN-Unified, NSP-A, Nepali Janata Dal, Sanghiya Loktantrik Rashtriya Manch secured two seats each.

The Samajbadi Janta Party, Dalit Janajati Party, Nepal Pariwar Dal, Nepaa Rastriya Party, Nepal Loktantrik Samajbadi Party and the Chure Bhawar Rastriya Ekata Party bagged one seat each in the CA.
Though the CPN-United Marxist had fielded 100 candidates under PR system, it could not win even a single seat. The CPN-Unified, which had fielded 328 candidates, won only two seats. It is the fourth largest party after the NC, UML and Maoists in terms of the number of candidatesit fielded under PR system.

Announcing the PR results, chief election commissioner Bhojraj Pokhrel asked the political parties to submit by May 2 the names of candidates whom they want to send to the CA from their closed lists of candidates. The seats under the PR system were allocated on the basis of the proportion of the total valid votes to the votes polled by the parties, the EC said in a release.

Out of the 11,146,540 votes cast under the PR system, 407,462 were invalid. Over 63 per cent of the total eligible voters had cast their votes under the PR system.

267,448 votes wasted
KATHMANDU: 267,448 votes secured by 29 parties under the PR system went useless as the votes bagged by those parties failed to win any seat. It needed 23,512 votes for the Nepal Pariwar Dal to secure one seat, while CPN-Marxist failed to win a seat with 21,234 votes. For Maoists, they needed 31,442 votes to win a seat. On an average, smaller parties, which secured 0.22 to 0.38 per cent of the valid votes, won at least one seat. — HNS
[ KATHMANDU, APRIL 26, 2008, Baikash 14, 2065 ]
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