Elections in 65 districts today

13th NC General Convention

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KATHMANDU, Feb 8: After holding conventions at the village-level and electoral constituencies to elect representatives for upcoming general conventions, Nepali Congress (NC) is all set to hold district-level elections across the country on Monday.

As party members across the country have been sharply divided between the two rival factions led by party president Sushil Koirala and former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, the elections of district leaders are likely to be elected through vote in most of the districts.

Of the total 240 existing electoral constituencies, the party held conventions in over 191 constituencies and elected nearly 2,300 representatives, who will participate in a four-day general convention that will start on March 3 in Kathmandu.

The representatives were elected representing either Koirala or Deuba panel.

Due to the panel-wise division from local to the central level, the two rival factions have been preparing to compete in the district and central-level competitions accordingly because leaders said there is almost no chance to elect leaders through consensus.

The party's central election organizing committee has planned to conduct elections in around 65 of the total 75 districts on Monday.

The NC had earlier deferred local election events in some Tarai districts that have remained hot spots of protests of agitating Madhes-based political parties for the past few months.

Gopal Krishna Ghimire, member of the election committee, informed that the party has decided not to conduct district elections as well in those Tarai districts on Monday.

According to him, elections in Bara, Parsa, Sarlahi, Dhanusha and Saptari districts have been postponed until further notice.

And, elections in Kathmandu, Dang, Dolpa and Solukhumbhu have been deferred for a few days due to some other internal reasons.

"In most of the districts, only initial election procedures will begin tomorrow [Monday] while some districts may start announcing election results from Tuesday," Ghimire told Republica.

In 12 mountainous districts, which have only one electoral constituency each, elections for both constituency-level and district-level, will be held on Monday.