Kathmandu, March 13 – Incumbent President Bidya Devi Bhandari was elected for a second term in office with a total of vote weightage of 39,275 votes.
The weightage of one vote of Federal parliament member was fixed to be 79. And accordingly, the common candidate of the ruling parties including the left alliance, Ms Bhandari received 245 votes from among the National Assembly and House of Representatives members, which translates into a vote weightage of 19,355. Her contender Kumar Laxmi Rai of NC got 78 votes, which is a vote weightage of 6,162 votes.
Likewise, Bhandari got 415 votes in the provincial level. With the vote weightage standing at 48 per vote, Bhandari received 19,920 votes. Rai got 116 votes that is a vote weightage of 5, 568. A total of 52,501 vote weightage was maintained for election to the President. Three votes in federal parliament and five in provincial level were termed invalid. A total of 326 votes were cast in the federal parliament and 536 votes in the provincial parliament.
Five members of parliament including Dr Baburam Bhattarai, Jitendra Narayan Dev, Prem Suwal, Ramesh Yadav and Resham Lal Chaudhary remained absent in today’s election. Four nominated members to the National Assembly could not take part in the election, as the EC had already finalized the list of voters when they took their oath of office and secrecy. Likewise, at the provincial level, 13 were absent.
The voting that began at 10:00 am concluded at 15:00 hrs. Separate booths had been set up for federal parliamentarians and provincial parliamentarians for the vote that took place at the federal parliament building premises in New Baneswar.
President Bhandari was elected the second President of Nepal in October 2016 to replace the first President of Federal Republic of Nepal Dr Ram Baran Yadav. She will now serve a new five-year term. On both occasions, Bhandari was the common candidate of the CPN-UML and CPN-MC.
Former Vice-President of the CPN-UML, Bhandari has also served as the Defense Minister. She was elected member of the House of Representative thrice from Kathmandu. Bhandari was born to parents Ram Bahadur Pandey and Mithili Pandey on Asar 5, 2018 B.S. at Manebhanjyang of Bhojpur. She is the widow of then UML General Secretary Madhan Bhandari, with whom she has two daughters.
Newly elected President Bhandari will take the oath of office and secrecy tomorrow. The Chief Justice will administer the oath to the President.
The oath taking ceremony is scheduled for 4:00 pm Wednesday, said the President’s media expert Madhav Sharma.
