More than 19,000 invalid votes in Baitadi

About 19,771 votes in Baitadi were invalidated in the House of Representatives and State Assembly elections held on November 20.

According to the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, 77,460 votes were cast directly among the members of the House of Representatives. Out of which 4,962 votes have been invalidated. 40,155 direct votes were cast in State Assembly constituency No. 1, and 2,013 votes were invalidated. 37,280 direct votes were cast in State Assembly constituency No.2. Among them 1,820 votes were invalidated.

Members of the House of Representatives cast 77,761 votes proportionally, out of which 5,421 votes were invalid. 77,423 votes were cast on the proportional side of the state assembly members and 5,055 votes were invalidated. It is said that these votes were invalid due to ineffective voter education programs.

Chief of the District Election Office, Madhav Phuyal claims that voter education is effective. He said, "Votes are being invalidated in cities like Kathmandu. The number of invalid votes here is natural. Voter education cannot be blamed".

Phuyal said that most of the invalid votes were found to have swastika stamps on two or more election symbols on the same ballot paper. He said, "Some ballot papers were found to have fingerprints on them and were invalidated, while most of them were found to have stamps on two or more marks."

A voter education program was conducted by mobilizing volunteers in all the wards and reaching the communities for 15 days. There were 150,156 voters in Baitadi, only 77,460 votes were cast.

There were 22 candidates in the election field in this district, which has one constituency for the House of Representatives and two constituencies for the members of the Provincial Assembly.

Here, CPN UML's Damodar Bhandari has won in the House of Representatives and UML's Surendra Pal has won in State Assembly Region-1 and Shivraj Bhatt of Nepali Congress has won in State Assembly Region No. 2.