Himal Press 
Poudel (left) and Nembang
KATHMANDU: Ram Chandra Poudel of the Nepali Congress and Subash Chandra Nembang of the CPN-UML are the two candidates contesting the presidential election.
A meeting of the work performance committee of Nepali Congress held on Saturday morning decided to field its senior leader Ram Chandra Poudel in the presidential election. Similarly, the CPN-UML has chosen Vice President Subash Chandra Nembang as its presidential candidate.
Interestingly, both Poudel and Nembang are former Speakers of the House of Representatives. Poudel has the support of eight political parties. In contrast, Nembang has the support of only the UML so far. The UML plans to request the CPN (Maoist Center) to vote for Nembang, as per the understanding reached on December 25. However, Maoist Center is unlikely to vote for Nembang since Poudel is the common candidate of the eight-party coalition.
According to Article 62 of the Constitution of Nepal, the President and Vice President are elected by an electoral college consisting of 275 members of the House of Representatives, 59 members of the National Assembly, and 550 members of the provincial assemblies. The votes of federal parliament members and province assembly members carry different weights. The voting weightage of a sitting lawmaker is calculated by dividing the total population of the country by the number of federal parliament members. Similarly, the voting weightage of provincial assembly members is calculated by dividing the total population by the number of provincial assembly members.
Since the National Statistics Office has not yet published the final report of the 2021 census, the Election Commission is planning to use the population data from the 2011 census to calculate the voting weightage.
