Nepal

Election Commission is drafting a bill to increase women’s candidacy in all three tiers of government by a third.

At least one third of the elected representatives in the federal parliament must be women, as per the Constitution of Nepal. The constitutional provision has been met so far by inducting women representatives through proportional representation.

As proportional representation votes are scattered among parties, women, Dalits, Janajatis will be underrepresented.

With most Dalit, Janajati and women candiates across parties failing to win the first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections for the House of Representatives, the upcoming parliament is set to become less inclusive than the last one.

KATHMANDU, Nov 25: Five women candidates have been elected to the House of Representatives (HoR) in the elections held on November 20. According to the data of the Election Commission (EC), women candidates were elected from five constituencies across the country till Thursday evening. According to the EC, Sobita Gautam of Rastriya Swatantra Party was elected from Kathmandu-2 and Toshima Karki from Lalitpur-3, Bidya Bhattarai of CPN-UML from Kaski-2, Rekha Sharma of CPN (Maoist Center) from Dang-2 and Ranjita Shrestha of Nagarik Unmukti Party from Kailali-1.

With few women FPTP candidates, more of them may need to be elected to the upper house to meet the requirement.

Cross-party women politicians have long been lobbying with their leaders to increase the number of female candidates in the first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections. Their efforts to secure one-third women candidates in direct election, however, couldn’t materialise as the parties prioritised male candidates.

Almost all political parties have an extremely lower ratio of women to men candidates fielded under the first-past-the-post category in the upcoming elections.

Kathmandu: The preliminary data released by the Election Commission, the country’s election management body, shows that few women are contesting in the upcoming parliamentary elections in Nepal.

The result announcement of elections held on May 13 have revealed two women candidates as the winners of mayoral elections in two local levels of Rautahat district. 

Reena Kumari Shah and Kaushalaya Devi will hold office as mayors in Maulapur and Ishnath municiaplities in Rautahat.