The voter turnout stood at 61 percent when the country voted for the House of Representatives (HoR) and provincial assembly elections on Sunday, according to the Election Commission.
Compared to previous elections, the voter turnout dwindled significantly this time. However, officials said that the voter turnout could go up by a few percentage points when vote count comes to an end.
Of the 17.98 million registered voters, only 61 percent cast their ballots in today's elections, according to Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Thapaliya.
"The voter turnout is lower than our expectations. It could go up by a few percentage points when vote count comes to an end," Thapaliya told a press conference at the EC headquarters on Sunday evening.
If the voter turnout stands at 61 percent, it will be the lowest since the country held the first Constituent Assembly (CA) elections in 2008 (61.69 percent). However, the voter turnout stood at 78.71 percent in the second CA elections, the highest ever since the country held elections in 1991.
There are several factors behind the significant drop in the voter turnout in elections this time. The first is the alliance politics. The are two broad electoral alliances in these elections. The ruling alliance led by the ruling Nepali Congress has communist parties—CPN (Maoist Center), CPN (Unified Socialist) and a Madhes-centric party Loktantrik Samajbadi Party (LSP) its members. On the other hand, monarchist and Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Prajantantra Party led by Kamal Thapa and Madhes-centric Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) led by Upendra Yadav are allies in the CPN (UML)’s electoral alliance.
The committed cadres of the parties seem to have skipped voting in federal parliament and provincial assembly polls where there was no candidate from their party. Since the country held local elections in May this year, the alliance politics came to the spotlight again.
The second reason is that candidates failed to encourage eligible voters to cast ballots as they lacked people-oriented agendas.
