Election commission publishes plan to hold CA polls

The Nepali Election Commission ( EC) has published its plan to hold Constituent Assembly (CA) polls by mid-June, a leading newspaper, The Himalayan Times, reported on Saturday.

The EC is going to update the voters' list in all but some mountainous districts across the country from January 23 to February 6, according to the plan issued on Friday.

According to the data updated in April 2005, Nepal has 15.3 million voters.

Chief Election Commissioner Bhoj Raj Pokharel said the government had to provide the EC with necessary legal instruments so that it could accelerate its preparations for the CA polls.

"Delay in promulgation of the interim constitution will affect the EC's time schedule and it may be impossible to hold CA polls on time," he said.

As part of preparation for the polls, the EC recently imparted training to 20 officers and 176 computer operators in different districts.

A total of 140 officers and assistants in four development regions will be provided training on January 8-9.

On January 12-13, training will be provided to 4,721 assisting district-level name collectors in some Terai districts in southern Nepal, while the same training will be held on January 17-18 in other districts.

"Some 22,000 collectors of voters' names will be provided training on January 21-22 all over the country," he said.

Pokharel has urged the government not to transfer any government staffer, which might affect the forthcoming elections.

"The political parties, in a meeting held on Friday, have agreed to support the EC," he added.

The EC has decided to use semi-transparent plastic ballot boxes while it is yet to decide whether it can experiment with electronic voting machines this time.

The Constituent Assembly is an elected body, like parliament, of elected people's representatives to formulate the new constitution.

Source: Xinhua