Nepal braces for 2nd Local Elections-

Kathmandu, May 12-

The 2022 Nepalese local elections are going to be held in 13 May, 2022 in 6 metropolitan cities, 11 sub-metropolitan cities, 276 municipalities and 460 rural municipalities.It will be the second local level election to be held since the promulgation of the new constitution.

Despite misgivings about how the local bodies will function under a federal dispensation, and despite the much maligned bulldozered hill areas in an attempt to construct roads, the local bodies survived and now have become the new normal.

There will be 7 candidates to choose in every ward of the Rural Municiplaity or Municiplaity or Metropolitan City. Each local level has a Chairperson/Mayor and a Deputy chairperson/Deputy Mayor. Local levels are further subdivided into wards which have a ward chairperson and 4 members out of which 2 must be female with 1 one of them from the Dalit community.[4] The Chairperson/Mayor and a Deputy chairperson/Deputy Mayor are chosen by voters of the entire local level while Ward Chairperson and Ward Members are chosen by voters of the concerned ward. A single ballot is used for voting and First past the post electoral system is used to select the winner.

Social Unity Party and Janajagaran Parry Nepal unified last month, and have participated on this election from some 25 places with a total of some 35 candidates. As their unification could not be legally completed, the two parties have praticipated in different districs under the election symbol of either guitar or torchlight.

Now, which symbol is more attractive to the masses is yet to be finalized, which could be a pull or push factor to the faith community.