Byas mayor dispute reaches Supreme Court

Kathmandu: The dispute regarding the counting of votes in Byas Municipality of Tanahun has reached the Supreme Court.

After the Pokhara High Court ordered a recount, the sitting mayor Baikuntha Neupane filed a writ in the Supreme Court. The petition filed by him on Thursday is scheduled for hearing on Sunday.

He has demanded an interim order in the first hearing, saying that if the votes are counted again according to the order of the High Court Pokhara, he will suffer irreparable damage until the final decision is taken from the Supreme Court.

On May 1st, the joint bench of High Court Judges Rajan Prasad Bhattarai and Nirmala Paudel Bhattarai delivered the verdict to recount the votes in Byas Municipality.

 It was mentioned in the verdict that after obtaining all the documents from the Election Commission and studying those documents, the votes cast in the election and null votes do not match with the total number of  casted votes.

According to which, the court had fixed the date itself for recounting the votes from 10:00 am on June 16th.

Deepakraj Joshi, who was defeated as an independent candidate for the mayoral post in the local elections held in May 2022, filed a case in the Pokhara High Court. He had demanded a recount of the votes alleging they were rigged. The High Court made such a decision two years after the case was registered.