Only nine women elected through FPTP voting

KATHMANDU: Only nine women have been elected to the House of Representatives through the first past the post (FPTP) system.

The Election Commission has published the final counting results in 160 out of 165 FPTP seats across the country. As per the results, four women have been elected from CPN-UML, two from Rastriya Swtantra Party (RSP) and one each from Nepali Congress (NC), CPN (Maoist Center), Nagarik Unmukti Party (NMP).

Julie Kumari Mahato, Bidya Bhattarai, Jawala Kumari Sah and Bhagwati Chaudhary have been elected from CPN-UML.

Similarly, Sobita Gautam and Dr Toshima were elected from Kathmandu-2 and Lalitpur-3 constituencies, defeating senior Maoist women leaders.

NC’s Sita Gurung has been elected from Terhathum, while Maoist Center’s Rekha Sharma defeated UML Secretary Shankar Pokharel in Dang-2. Similarly, Ranjita Chaudhary, chairman of Nagarik Unmukti Party, has been elected from Kailali-1 constituency.

The number of women elected to the House of Representatives is very low. This is because parties were hesitant to field women as candidates.

According to the Election Commission, out of 2,412 candidates contesting in 165 seats, only 225 were women.

The newly-formed Rastriya Swatantra Party fielded 12 women in the FPTP election. This is higher compared to the number of women candidates of established political parties. UML, for example, fielded only 11 candidates. Maoist Center, Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP) and NC had eight, seven and five, women candidates, respectively. CPN (Unified Center) and Rastriya Jana Morcha fielded one woman candidate each.

According to the Election Commission, out of 2,412 candidates contesting in 165 seats, only 225 were women. Similarly, only 280 women candidates have been fielded in 330 provincial assembly seats. Altogether 3,224 candidates contested in the province assembly election.