NA Election Lumbini Province: Know the candidates and vote weightage

BUTWAL, Jan 12: On 27 January three candidates from Lumbini Province will be elected to the National Assembly (NA). For these three seats candidates of the ruling alliance and the main opposition party will face-off. Both have fielded three candidates for the posts.

The ruling alliance include ruling Nepali Congress, CPN (Maoist Centre), CPN-(Unified Socialist), Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP) and Rastriya Janamorcha Party while the CPN-UML is the main opposition party in parliament.

From CPN-UML, Barati Upadaya and Rajendra Laxmi Gaire of CPN (US) representing the ruling coalition are facing off from the Women category in the NA by-polls from the province.

Likewise in other categories, Ram Dayal Gupta of CPN-UML and Yubaraj Sharma of NC are facing off. Similarly, Krishna Sunar of UML and Tula Prasad BK of Rastriya Janamorcha Party are contesting from the Dalit category.

Know the vote weightage

In earlier NA-polls, Hagnarayan Pandey of NC was elected as a member of NA from Lumbini Province with 4,140 votes. His nearest contender was Chandra Bahadur Khadka of UML who garnered 3,612 votes. In that election as well, the UML had stood against the coalition including NC and Maoist Centre. However, it is to be noted that during that period, UML had not splitted. 

There are currently 296 voters in the province for the NA by-election. Of them, 81 are members of the provincial assembly and 215 are chiefs of local units. With this the total votes will be altogether 7,758.

In the present scenario, the ruling coalition has 4,290 votes at the local level whereas the opposition has 3,312 votes.

Meanwhile, in the provincial assembly, each member comprises 48 votes. Here, the NC and the Maoist Centre have 19 members each and the JSP has four members. Likewise, the Rastriya Janamorcha Party and the CPN (US) have one member each. With this figure, the ruling coalition has a total of 2,112 votes in the provincial assembly.

Similarly, the opposition, the UML, has 36 members in the provincial assembly which makes a total of 1,728 votes. Moreover, the party has 88 chiefs in the local levels which makes 1,584 votes. 

Also, there is one provincial assembly member and four chiefs at the local level who were elected earlier independently. Their total votes is 120. 

If the ruling alliance comes out victorious in the upcoming NA by-polls from Lumbini Province, the main opposition party, UML, will lose two seats in the NA.