Pokhara, May 21
The counting of votes from last week’s local level elections, which had halted in Pokhara-Lekhanath Metropolitan City on Saturday after a disagreement among parties over reportedly “forged” ballot papers, is yet to resume.
The Nepali Congress, the CPN-Maoist Centre and the Rastriya Prajatantra Party had claimed that they had found “forged” ballot papers inside ballot boxes from ward 17.
Election officials organised an all-party meeting today in a bid to resume the counting, but the meeting ended inconclusively.
During the meeting, the CPN-UML had proposed to continue the counting from other wards and make a decision about the disputed ward after an onsite investigation. The poll officials had agreed with the proposal, but other parties were adamant on the demand that the dispute should be settled first.
During the counting yesterday, around 10 ballot papers of a different size had been reportedly found and the UML was voted for in all of them.
So far, only 38 per cent votes have been counted in the city.
