KATHMANDU, Nov 19: In view of the upcoming elections, the Election Commission (EC) has deployed mobile teams to update voter rolls in various 21 alpine and high hill districts.
According to Election Commissioner Ila Sharma, the teams are being deployed starting Saturday as the fast approaching winter could affect the process of updating the voter rolls in these districts. “This is our regular process. We have decided to deploy mobile teams to update the existing voter rolls in view of the upcoming elections,” Sharma told Republica.
According to Commissioner Sharma, the EC has demanded additional budget from the Ministry of Finance for deploying similar teams in the remaining 54 districts. “We will have to mobilize at least 37,000 civil servants to update the voter rolls across the country,” she further said.
Voter list update starts
The EC has demanded about Rs 70 million for updating the voter rolls. The government is planning to hold local election by mid-April 2017. As per the constitution, all three elections -- local, provincial and national -- must be held by January, 2018.
Election Commissioner Sharma said that they are deploying teams to update voter rolls independently of citizenship distribution teams. “There seems to be confusion that our teams will be deployed along with the citizenship distribution teams. Ours is independent work,” Sharma clarified.
