July 27, 2017
Ending an age-old system, a new bill related to the election of members of the House of Representatives has barred the practice of single candidate contesting from more than one constituency.
The said provision, under the Article 14 of the newly-proposed bill, is planned for implementation in the upcoming election to be held under the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) election system. Any candidacy that fails to follow the provision will be cancelled.
The candidate in race for the FPTP election will not be eligible for inclusion in the closed list of proportional nominees and the proportional representation name list is limited to only one candidate per political party.
As per the Bill, the government plans to conduct the local, provincial and federal elections within the stipulated time frame (January 21, 2018).
Marking a historical judgement, the Bill proposed a right-to-reject provision for the directly-elected members of the House of Representatives in parliamentary elections.
The Bill also proposes to conduct a re-polling by canceling the ongoing or recently-held election results, if a polling station is captured or ballot papers are found destroyed in the process of counting votes.
As per the Constitution, 65 out of 275 members of the House of Representatives will be elected through the FPTP system, while the remaining 110 will be through proportional representation.
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