Election fever grips Jhapa

JHAPA, March 4: As the date for long overdue local elections has been announced for May 14 this year, the excitement among the people, mostly eligible voters, has escalated in Jhapa.

A total of 503,173 voters are registered at the District Election Office (DEO), Jhapa of them, 253,030 are women, 250,139 men and four from LGBTI community.

Recently 13,803 voters registered themselves as voters in the biometric voters list of Jhapa who are eagerly looking forward to casting their votes in the election that is taking place after around 2 decades.

Basanta Kumar Ganesh of Kechana-9 in the district shared that the election has been the talk of the town in Kechana VDC which he said lags behind on development index.

Ganesh was hopeful that the development works which were stagnant in absence of people’s representatives at local level would gain pace following the election of officials in the VDC.

Nepali Congress (NC) Jhapa Chapter President Uddav Thapa said that the public were excited for election as they believe that election of people’s representative at local bodies would facilitate them to avail government services conveniently.

According to him, NC Jhapa chapter has already made preparations to select candidates to contest for the election with 30 other parties that have been listed in the District Election Office, Jhapa so far.

CPN-UML Jhapa Chapter Chairperson Chintan Pathak informed that UML is gearing up for the election for which the current major opposition is waging nation-wide campaign.

Similarly, CPN-Maoist Centre Jhapa Coordinator Mani Kumar Sampang (Bijaya) said that people are gushed due to upcoming election and are deliberating who to vote for.

‘The political parties contesting in the upcoming election should acknowledge it as an opportunity to help manage the expectation of the public,” he argued.

Rastriya Prajatantra Party Jhapa Chapter Vice-President Kamal Kharel expressed solidarity with the public’s will towards the election and said, “We should all ensure the election.”

The DEO, Jhapa is also working at war footing pace in view of the upcoming election. Election Officer Gopal Acharya stated that the DEO, Jhapa is chalking out plans and programmes as per the instructions from the Centre to prepare the details of the human resources to be mobilized during the poll, updating voter list among others as the country goes to poll on May 14. RSS